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ariainstars · 4 years ago

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Ben Solo - A Sad Star Wars Story

Warning: longer post. (And possibly, a few unpopular opinions.)

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For a start: I’m not here to say I like how the sequels ended with Episode IX, in particular the way they handled their protagonist.

It sucked, to say the least.

I am writing this because looking back now, I can hardly imagine how the authors could have wrapped up the sequel trilogy with the happy ending we expected.

Let’s start with that word: happy. Honestly, did anyone want Ben to be “happy” with what Rey has become? I did expect her to fall down the rabbit hole. We repeatedly have witnessed how aggressive and judgmental she is; and by all logic, she had to meet her own Dark Side in order to realize that she has no right to judge the man she first knew as Kylo Ren. The moment I heard Palpatine’s evil laugh in the first trailer, I figured he had come to pursue Rey, not him. Unfortunately, her moment of shock was short and she hardly learned from it; if anything, since Luke sent her right back into the battle. This scene may have been what fanbros expected from Luke, but honestly, it was ridiculous. It did not fit to The Last Jedi’s Luke and it did not do Rey any favor.

And: had Ben emerged victoriously, found his happy ending, how would the title “The Rise of Skywalker” be justified? He is a Skywalker by blood, but in fact he is a Solo.

Wrapping Up the Saga

The sequels were received with mixed feelings from the start. Fans of old were angry at The Force Awakens since it seemed to say that history was repeating itself; that the heroes or the original trilogy had brought down the Empire but not managed to preserve peace. We saw them separated from one another as they once had been, disillusioned and worn out. Not the mention the wasp’s nest that was raised by The Last Jedi! If the Prequel Trilogy dismantled the illusion that the Jedi were perfect, the Sequel Trilogy definitively does the same with the Skywalker family. Both messages are clear for everyone to see, provided one is ready and willing to see them.

If Star Wars is a tale with a moral - and given its approach and the fact that it was handed over by Lucas to Disney of all studios it is - then the authors are trying since the 80ies to teach our minds to a compassionate approach on both villains and heroes. One of the main reasons why many fans dislike the prequels is that they expected to see the Jedi and Anakin / Vader being cool; they felt let down by witnessing the Jedi’s narrow-mindedness and Anakin’s strong emotionality. The affronted reactions to The Last Jedi were on the same line of thought. The prequels showed that the Jedi were not the good guys, and for the observant viewer this is already clear enough in the original trilogy. But it was only with The Last Jedi that the elephant in the room was finally approached.

Through Rey, The Rise of Skywalker makes clear that wanting to be a Jedi does not entail actual heroism but the conviction of being a hero. And Rey’s dyad in the Force, the tragic figure of Ben Solo, warns about the dangers coming from a child and teenager no one believed in as a person because everybody only saw his powerful potential.

The Jedi’s Failure

Neither Luke nor Anakin nor Rey needed the Jedi in order to become heroes. They already were good-hearted, brave and idealistic when we first met them. The Jedi ways did not make any of them happy; they learned to use their powers and employed them for short-lived “victories”, but they never found lasting peace.

Not a few fans have wondered how Luke Skywalker, who believed in his father despite all, could give up on his nephew that fatal night (even if it was only a moment of panic). Simply put: as strong and mature as he is by the time of Return of the Jedi, Luke suffers from a father trauma, and he desperately wishes for Vader to become Anakin again, his father, who used to be a hero. When he asks Vader to leave and come with him, it is not out of pure idealism but also a personal request. But Luke did not need his nephew. The moment he had at the temple was a personal issue, it had little to do with Ben’s strength in the Force or his status as Luke’s model student: Luke was afraid that Ben would be the end of everything he loved. Luke, Leia and Han were thrown together by a trauma bonding; Ben had no place with them because he hadn’t been through the same.

The actual tragedy in Ben Solo’s life was the bitter realization, over and over, that he was not needed by anyone (except for being abused, e.g. by Snoke). Ben desired Rey even before he had met her because she was powerful but unexperienced, and he hoped to find sense and belonging by protecting and instructing her. No wonder Rey’s rejection in the Throne Room drove him out of his mind with rage: it was another confirmation of what he had experienced all his life - that people can do without him. So he decided, bitterly and sullenly, that he could do without others as well. But over and over, he had to realize that he could not escape his want for connection. He kept hunting for Rey; and he was very conflicted both when it came to his father and his uncle, letting on that he did have an emotional connection with both of them although he didn’t want to accept it.

Ben’s tragedy was that he did not want to be special at all, and that contrarily to his uncle and grandfather he was aware of it. Ben simply wanted to belong somewhere.

It is an intrinsic part of the saga that a hero is never a hero “because he is superior to others for… reasons”: Star Wars does not bow to that cliché. Some people are born with the capacity to tap into the Force, but not all of the saga’s heroes have it. The morally good qualities a person has, the right decisions they make are not inborn but passed on, learned, communicated. In A New Hope Luke was saved by Han, to whom he had offered companionship and set an example by trying to save Leia. In Return of the Jedi Vader was won over by his son’s loyalty and sacrifice. For an average action film hero, this kind of attitude or outcome of his adventures would be unacceptable: a hero is expected to be triumphant, not saved by someone else. And I know enough fans who don’t understand Luke and prefer Han or Vader to him, who are both cooler and more predictable.

In film, where characters need to be introduced to the audience within the scope of minutes, narratives are applied in a way that the general audience gets them quickly. The downside is that this goes at the expense of nuances. Fans don’t like to see Anakin being passionate and stormy because as Darth Vader he was coded as brutal but cool; they don’t get Obi-Wan’s many mistakes because he was coded as a hero, or Yoda’s arrogance due to his status as a wise old mentor. The sequels brought this dichotomy to a new level coding Rey as the heroine although she has a bad attitude and comes from bad blood, and Ben Solo as the villain when his attitude is conflicted at worst, and who is the offspring of the original story’s heroes. The difference lies in their intentions - hers are good, his are bad. This is interesting because it makes us, the audience, question ourselves as to how and why we believe we can tell good from evil.

You could probably say into a megaphone that the Jedi are not the good guys who always win, that the Force is not a superpower belonging only to the Jedi and that there is no simple Dark and Light but that the Force needs balance: some viewers will never get it. I guess everybody feels the saga’s subtext on a subconscious level; but woe betide if someone like Rian Johnson brings it up to the surface for everyone to see.

Narrative Key

One of the main reasons why The Last Jedi is so divisive is, I think, that its major theme connecting all of the others is communication. While the prequels told much about miscommunication or lack thereof, Episode VIII is packed full of beautiful examples of what happens when people actually manage to communicate; and even when they do not, they learn from their misunderstanding one another (e.g. Poe with Admiral Holdo).

It is a common but major mistake not to question the narrative key to a story. Many Star Wars fans believe the story is simply about the good guys defeating the bad guys, so they overlook the deeper themes of the saga and respond with outrage when the authors try to humanize their heroes, bringing them down from their alleged pedestal. It is e.g. helpful to know Joseph Campbell’s monomyth theory; to consider that a film saga is not the same as a TV show and that therefore if the characters go through changes these must be significant from one instalment to the next due to the time limitations; to watch a few films by Akira Kurosawa, in particular The Hidden Fortress, to understand the significance of a major event seen through different eyes; or consider the prequels’ parallels with legends, classic literature, or the Bible - Lucifer’s fall, Romeo and Juliet, the tales of King Arthur. Star Wars is a conglomeration of many narratives, from Western films to the Japanese to French fairy tales to Greek mythology to Shakespearean drama. Who approaches these films expecting mere “action” is bound to be disappointed. It is understandable, however, that if you are used to certain kinds of stories, you will assume that every story should basically follow the same lines, and you will have difficulties accepting anything that is different, or believe it’s just badly made.

I still remember the (sometimes vicious) quarrels I followed in an online forum a few years ago about a Japanese mecha anime who some fans by hook or crook wanted to fit into the structure of a French novel. Of course, those two narratives don’t fit together: no wonder most of the other fans didn’t accept that kind of interpretation.

The Phantom of the Opera’s film version of 2004 was largely a failure both with regard to quality and audience appreciation because it made a tacky Byronic romance of a story that actually is a mystery thriller, probably expecting that it would be more appealing that way. What the filmmakers accomplished was making the story flat and the characters annoying by stripping them of the drama behind the original story.

Filming Rebecca’s film version from 1940 Hitchcock managed the transition excellently maintaining the storyline of the original novel; but Daphne duMaurier’s book is a coming-of-age story, and who expects a crime thriller may feel irritated by the narrators’ meandering and detailed inner monologue.

Game of Thrones also could not culminate in “all’s well that ends well”. The last season was not well-made, but I think now that was not the whole reason behind the audience’s disappointment. The show always was very crude and included loads of horrific events; even the worst victims of the war, who seemed to have a justification for their actions and seemed well-meaning, at times did terrible things. It would be a misfit to apply a happy ending to a “sex and violence” narrative as with another martial epic, like Aeneid and Iliad. Who waits for happy endings ought to avoid this kind of story from the start. (Yes, I know, I should listen to my own advice - had I imagined how depressing Rogue One is, Star Wars fan or not, I would probably have skipped it.)

Stories of this kind can be dissatisfying because as an audience, we follow our heroes’ adventures, sometimes for years, and we usually want to see them to find their happiness in the end. But in all honesty: we should have imagined.

That is why I think it was naïve to believe that the sequel trilogy would lead Ben to a happy ending with Rey. I have read more than one fanfiction which irritated me at first, until I realized that they were told on the lines of Fifty Shades of Grey, or Pride and Prejudice. That may work well for a fanfiction, but Star Wars is not a mere romance. Even if there was a hint of the overture to Romeo and Juliet during the abduction: couples based on that trope are not destined to end well. I myself was hoping for a happy ending due to the fact that the saga’s rights were in the hands of Disney of all production companies; and giving that the Skywalker family is one of the most famous in pop culture, I was certain they wouldn’t wipe them out. However I was not quite sure how they would do that and make it convincing, and I was wary when it came to the assumption (which many Reylo’s took for granted) that the love between Rey and Ben would be strong enough to save the galaxy and give them a happy ever after.

When a guy is introduced by murdering a defenseless old man, letting an entire village be wiped out with practiced ease, going on with torturing another guy both physically and mentally and climaxing with the horrible crime of patricide, one can hardly expect a happy ever after for him; even less since so very little was explained in terms of his childhood and adolescence. Some viewers identified with Ben Solo and saw his abandonment and abuse issues; many others didn’t, and none of the sequel films really thematized them. That he made peace with his parents and died to save the girl he loved is sufficient for a convincing redemption arc, not to offer him a happy closure.

The Trope That Comes Closest

There were a lot of speculations with regard to the trope Ben (Kylo) and Rey were actually modelled on. Romeo and Juliet, Hades and Persephone, Pride and Prejudice or Beauty and the Beast, and there were probably more. Rian Johnson is known for loving The Phantom of the Opera more than any other musical. I don’t think that’s coincidental.

- The phantom is disfigured by birth, Ben is extremely powerful by birth; and Ben also gets disfigured by Rey during their duel. (Vader’s sunken, charred face under the mask was, for a long time, how I imagined the phantom unmasked by the way.) - The phantom is highly intelligent and has huge musical talent. Ben was born with a strong power in the Force. - Both wear masks and look much less threatening without them. They also wear a cloak, and black clothes. - The phantom had committed terrible crimes both to protect himself and to punish a world which would not accept him. Sounds familiar? - In the musical we do not get to know how he became a ruthless monster in the first place. Ditto. - The phantom dies (or disappears, in the musical) because only the girl knew that he was lonely and unhappy and that he still had goodness inside him. She had forgiven him, but the rest of the world wouldn’t have believed her or forgiven him.

Both Kylo Ren and the Phantom are creatures who are at the same time terrible and wonderful. The normal world, populated by average people, cannot accept them because they are both too fascinating and too terrifying. In order to find lasting fulfilment, Ben ought to have found back to humanness. The phantom couldn’t due to his disfigurement and his criminal past; and though Ben loses the scar on his face, the Cain’s mark of the patricide he committed, his deed and his former status as Supreme Leader of the First Order never would have been forgotten.

“Yet in his eyes all the sadness of the world Those pleading eyes that both threaten and adore…” Christine in The Phantom of the Opera (on the rooftop)

Heroes: Dynamic and Static Characters

A general rule of storytelling is differentiating between dynamic and static (also called “impact”) characters. A static character is like an anchor for others: while they live through crises, learning and maturing, this character always remains his old self and always stands for the same values. He may be misunderstood, opposed and belittled, he may lose the battle, but never the war; and after having helped others through their troubles, he usually is on his own. (Cue: cowboy riding into the sunset.)

Superman stands for peace and justice, Jack Sparrow for freedom, Peter Pan for the innocence of childhood, Paddington for faith in people’s goodness. No wonder they are so popular: it is familiar and reassuring to follow the adventures of someone who is always like a rock in a storm. Static characters are in essence childlike, two-dimensional; which is probably why our child self easily gets attached to them and may be outraged at the idea of them changing, or maybe (gasp) being wrong about something.

But George Lucas developed his saga along the lines of personal growth, and by exploring its themes: thankfully, otherwise it would have become as boring and repetitive as so many other franchises. To continue a story you can either make it dynamic, or press the repeat button over and over. The Skywalker men with their strong emotionality may be unusual heroes, but much more interesting than other, “cooler” guys whose actions are more or less foreseeable. So, I can understand the Disney studio’s choices. On the other hand, it is not surprising when fans of old get angry when their supposedly unalterably perfect heroes make mistakes: everybody wants to know that some things (or persons) never change. Even if on the long run, change might be for the better.

I think one of the sequels’ most important messages was that the Skywalker-Organa-Solo family failed their heir precisely because their mindset did not change. Ben grew up in another world than they did; obsolete political structures, dictatorship or rebellions did not matter to him. But his family wanted him to adhere to the ideals that had gotten them through the war against the Empire, discouraging him from searching and finding his own place in the world, a world that now was very different both from the old Republic and the Empire.

Whether a static or dynamic character is more relatable to the audience is a personal matter. Many fans adore Darth Vader, Leia and Han Solo etc. precisely for the fact that basically they always remain their old selves. Padmé also is a favorite, probably due to the fact that she does not change considerably. Anakin changes a lot, which is perceived as a sign of weakness. Some fans may relate more to Luke, who undergoes serious trials and emerges from them stronger and wiser, far away from the greenhorn he was in A New Hope. And yet Luke’s final decision to throw his weapon away before Palpatine is often perceived as weird to this day. It’s not “heroic”.

The outraged fans who ranted at Luke’s portrayal in The Last Jedi did not realize that Luke was doing something both Obi-Wan and Yoda, or the other Jedi for that matter, never had done: he took responsibility for his actions. In this context Ben was the audience’s self-insert, he was as appalled at Luke’s misstep as we were. Such a blow is enough to send someone on a lonely island to meditate about his mistakes for years, convinced that the world is better without him.

But for the action film audience, that is not acceptable. If you have a light sabre and the Force (an alleged superpower), what do you need responsibility for? You can’t do wrong if you’re the hero, right? Luke also was the only character from the original trilogy who underwent character growth, which makes it all the more ironic that the many, many critics who tear the sequels to pieces are fuming at how Luke could be so “defiled”. Luke grew beyond the person he had been in A New Hope; these fans obviously did not. Which is why the studios thought they had to produce The Rise of Skywalker in order to “appease” them and to give them the Luke Skywalker they wanted.

Where Does the Galaxy Go From Here?

A conversation between my husband and me, about a year before The Rise of Skywalker came out.

Me: “I hope Ben Solo will survive at the end of the trilogy.” Him: “I do hope that, too. But they won’t give him a happy ending.” Me: “Why?” Him: “He killed his own father.”

I hate to admit it, but he was right. I’m not aware what ethics code is under use in the film industry now, but in any case, the horrible crime of patricide was done; even if it was under coercion, the son traumatized by it, and it ultimately brought him back to redemption. You can’t make a patricide, the former right hand and for a time leader of a terrorist organization a hero and give him a happy ending; in particular when you are Disney of all film studios. (Not to mention that he killed Han Solo, a very popular character.) And from exchanges with other viewers I am aware that many do not understand how Ben killed Han under Snoke’s coercion, and the implications that led him to kill Snoke: they believe he simply did it because it’s something an evil, power-hungry person will do.

Ben dying without anyone knowing that he was not a villain at heart and worse, leaving the fates of the galaxy in the hands of a young woman whom we often saw giving in to evil influences again and again within the scope of minutes was a dangerous turn. If he was but “a child in a mask”, Rey is a child who believes to be a Jedi. How is Rey supposed to be a heroine, with the other half of her soul gone? She and Ben fitted together perfectly because she had the good intentions but a violent attitude, while his intentions were bad but his attitude desperately conflicted because inherently good. Rey came from evil blood but was kind-hearted because she believed in her parent’s love. Ben was the heir of a family of heroes but did not feel loved by them, which made him lonely and bitter. What good is Rey on her own, even more so when at the end of Episode IX she deliberately leaves her friends and goes to a literal desert? The little girl inside of her is still starving for connection, and neither being a Jedi nor a “Skywalker” will appease her. She had to meet Luke to realize that he was a good man but still just a man; a lesson she didn’t quite internalize yet. The sequel trilogy wasn’t her story because her personality hardly developed. It was Ben who went through hell and back.

Films (and film sagas) have a determined length and as a film studio you need time to explore all themes, which in Star Wars are quite complex. The worst mistake I found with Episode IX was that it broke the Campbellian monomyth in favor of a Marvel type B-movie to appease the fans of old who had hated The Last Jedi. Which is understandable from their point of view, but went at the expense of quality. The Rise of Skywalker may have quenched the fire a little, but as a film, it’s frankly forgettable, and compared to the other films from the saga, I doubt that it will age well. Had the sequel trilogy continued Rian Johnson’s approach instead of putting a band-aid on The Last Jedi, it would have been good enough to make a cultural impact the way the classics did. If the sequel trilogy was meant to follow The Hero’s Journey, no one completed it: Ben died and Rey went into exile, and no one brought any kind of elixir or salvation into the world.

All of this is not to say that I have grown to like The Rise of Skywalker and that I am not disappointed about the ending, or no longer sad about Ben Solo’s death. I hope that the next trilogy will give him a second chance: I am still convinced that his ultimate fate should have been to bring lasting Balance to the Force. If I am wrong and his existence practically cancelled the past without improving anything, the whole saga loses its sense. I think that by now he atoned more than enough for his sins.

When I learned that Rian Johnson had negotiated his own trilogy after The Last Jedi, I remember wondering what it would be about. After all, almost everything had been said about the Skywalker saga, hadn’t it?

It hadn’t. I had naively assumed that like with Episodes III and VI, the final revelations were preserved for Episode IX. By now it seems to me like The Rise of Skywalker is meant as an appetizer for the next sequel. It can’t be that the studios unlearned how to make good films in so short a time after The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, also considering that everything else they made about Star Wars in between (Rogue One, Solo, The Mandalorian) is solid work and not by a long shot as flat as Episode IX.

The studios assuredly will keep their secrets as long as they can. The Mandalorian was met with huge expectations, yet nobody knew about Baby Yoda before the first episode was aired. Due to their depth and love for details, Star Wars films can be watched and discussed over and over, and the message regarding the necessity of Balance is still widely unknown or not accepted by the fans. If this is supposed to be not only an entertaining but also an educational tale, authors must give new fans room to get to know the saga, and old fans time to let the new ideas sink in. Lucas and his collaborators have taken decades trying to teach us that morals are not black and white. But still when The Last Jedi came out, the message was utterly hated.

Whatever Johnson’s trilogy will be about, it can’t be a part of the Skywalker saga any more: they are all dead. Even if Ben is brought back somehow, he is a Solo, so this time it would be the story of his own family. The Skywalker saga was basically Anakin’s, and by reconciling with a Palpatine and giving his life to save the woman he loved his grandson ultimately made up for his sins. The Last Jedi was a bold move; but what are “bold moves” supposed to be good for if they are not followed through? Apart from the fact that the sequels weren’t even exactly bold but drawing sums from what we already could see in original trilogy and prequels about the Jedi and the old Republic.

Family Is the Key

Star Wars is a family tale. It is for families and it is about families. One of the most frustrating things about The Rise of Skywalker was, for me, that the “new” heroes didn’t make any kind of home or family of their own; and a Star Wars film or series never works without a father figure at its heart. I am sure Ben Solo was ultimately meant to be a father figure; the sequels couldn’t work without even giving him the chance to be one. Anakin and Luke both founded a family - one through marriage, the other befriending many different people. The third generation did not even get a chance either way.

“I believe that you are redeemed by your children.” George Lucas

In Star Wars, children always have to pay for their parent’s sins, and only they can make them atone. Which makes it all the more tragic that Ben is not a father; by this logic, only his child could have saved him, or an adopted one. On seeing the enslaved children of Canto Bight, of whom one is Force-sensitive, I was convinced that the sequels would be the children’s trilogy. (I might have accepted Ben dying had he saved and left them with Rey, who also is an abandoned child and so would have found a meaningful task.)

What the galaxy needs most are not heroes but people. Heroes exist to save desperate situations; lasting peace can only be made by normal people. With Luke becoming a hero in the original trilogy and Anakin a villain in the prequels, I was expecting Ben to find back to humanness. Since we have another trilogy to look forward to, I do still hope Ben will get another chance and this time he will find his happiness; but I also believe that he will have a long way to go before that. By the end of The Rise of Skywalker he is a hero, but in order to be happy he would need to learn how to be fully human, realigning both sides of his personality and healing the gap between them (the way Anakin couldn’t). And you don’t learn how to embrace your humanness quickly after having lost it within the scope of years and years. Ben wanted Rey because she was the only person in the galaxy with whom he could be completely honest. But being human also entails bonding with other people, not only with one’s significant other.

Ben tried to pull off the “bad guy” role and failed because it’s not in his nature. A lot of fans see him as a loser, because whether good or evil, a male protagonist is supposed to be always unfazed. The gentle, nurturing and emphatic personality that comes out in Ben when he is balanced is not that of a warmonger but of a peacekeeper: I see nothing inacceptable or emasculating in that. Unfortunately, who has Luke, Anakin or Han as blueprints for “real” men, won’t accept someone like Ben Solo. I hope that in time, he will be more appreciated, and that his life story will be a warning both for the audience and for the saga itself, i.e. that it is more to the point not to punish a criminal but to prevent him from becoming that way in the first place. Which brings us again to the topic of children and a better way to raise them, Force-sensitive or not.

Rey and Ben both are children with unhealed wounds. Their brief moment of harmony during the Force connection on Ahch-To was so powerful because both were speaking to each other’s inner child: Ben saying to Rey that she was not alone, Rey offering Ben an understanding he had not known before. Padmé also always saw in Anakin the good little boy she had first met; one of the reasons of the unbalance in their relationship was that he felt powerless to do something for her in return.

I think that the sequel trilogy of the Skywalkers wanted to tell us is that even if you save the whole galaxy, it’s not sufficient if afterwards you can’t support and protect your own offspring. When we met Han, Leia and Luke again, their personalities were pretty much as we left them; their mistake in handling Ben can’t have been something they actually did to him, the blunder must lie somewhere in their attitude. All three of them were traumatized by cruelly losing or never having known a healthy family life, so we must assume that after the war against the Empire, they tried to build a new world that would fit to their needs. But if adults build a home, they must do so thinking first and foremost not of themselves but of the ones who need it more than them. Children shape the future, not a victory of “good” over “evil”. And I find it interesting that the codebreaker DJ, who had such a pragmatic view of war, was also someone we met on Canto Bight, like the children. He was a traitor, but as everyone in the saga, even he had a point when he said that ultimately, wars are useless because they always flare up again.

“Good, bad, made-up words. You blow them up today, they blow you up tomorrow.” DJ in The Last Jedi

The last scene of The Last Jedi showed us a Force-sensitive boy sweeping an open space before looking up at the sky and dreaming about being a Jedi. I still believe that this scene’s meaning was “Clear the stage, it’s time for us - the children.”

The Jedi, respectively Force-sensitive creatures, must find new and better ways if they want to be advocates for peace and justice. No institution can claim to have a moral standard if it does not protect, nurture and encourage their most vulnerable and needful members, i.e. the children. Watching the prequels it is shocking to follow how the intelligent, brave and affectionate child Anakin could become the most hated man in the galaxy, crushed in the powerplay between the “good but narrow-minded guys” and the “bad but not always wrong” guys. Both his and his grandson’s dark fate could have been avoided, had it not been for the Jedi mentality based upon the conviction of having the right to destroy everything that does not (or does not seem) to line up with them.

The Star Wars saga told us over and over that power is not what it takes. The Jedi lost the Clone Wars; Vader was a lonely, bitter guy (not to mention Palpatine); Kylo had all the power his grandfather never had and it did him no good. Anakin, Han and Ben all were loved most by their women when they were at their weakest. And this brings me back to what I stated above: stories can be interpreted in different ways, but what about the message the author actually wanted to convey? If I am not getting it all wrong, it’s that compassion and not power is the key to everything good.

Episode VII and IX mirror one another, only VIII hints at a possible balance. Star Wars has a cyclical narrative; Anakin / Vader had his happiest moments and successes in his youth, while his grandson in his own youth hit rock bottom and committed his worst sins. If Kylo Ren’s destiny, as per Adam Driver’s words, is supposed to be the opposite of Darth Vader’s, how can The Rise of Skywalker really be the ultimate ending for him?

P.S. What do you think, could baby Yoda and Ben meet? Then Obi-Wan and Yoda would be together again in a new way. P.P.S I would also like to see the Force, for once. I’m sure it’s not black and white at all. How about a rainbow? (Does anyone have Rian Johnson’s e-mail…? 😊) P. P.P.S. On the other hand, if the next film starts with Rey being pregnant and not knowing how, I might be sick… ☹

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padawanlost · 4 years ago

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Hey! I was wondering, how much power did Palpatine have over the Jedi before episode 2? And how much power did he get over them after the emergency powers? I always hear arguments about how the Jedi tried to fix/do things (even before Ep 2), but weren't allowed to so couldn't. Like, for example letting Palpatine have access to Anakin. It's never really sat right with me, and seems like making excuses, but I'm unsure. Sorry if this is worded weird!

Hey! Short answer is no. The fandom in the last couple of years created this twisted narrative that no one had control over anything but Palpatine. and that’s simply not the case. I don’t know how it became so widespread, considering this particular trend started with people trying to justify slavery, child abuse and corruption. Regardless, it’s revisionist history. If you pay attention to the arguments you’ll notice they are not backed by sources, it’s mostly something akin to ‘it’s not a war crime because *I* don’t believe it’s a war crime’.

Anyway, I won’t get into right now because I’m short on time so I’ll give you some *facts* and let you make your conclusions:

How much power the Palpatine had over the Jedi before episode 2?

It depends on what you mean by ‘power over’. It’s like asking how much power does your country’s president have over a police officer? They are bound by rank and authority but it’s not like the present have control over an individual’s personal choices. They had to follow the law, anything beyond that was their own responsibility.

According to the Republic’s law, the Jedi order operated under the Judicial Department. In turn, the Judicial Department was subordinated to the Chancellor’s office. However, the Jedi order had far more independence than the rest of the department, being able to chose which missions they would accept and how they would proceed.

Though not formally bound by the Ruusan Reformations, the Jedi Order made fundamental changes as well. The Jedi gave up the bulk of their forces, from ground vehicles to warships and starfighters, and became part of the Judicial Department, reinforcing the fact that they answered to the Senate and were ideally counselors and advisers, not warriors. To decrease the chance that far-flung academies might stumble into dangerous explorations of the Force, Jedi training was consolidated in the Temple on Coruscant. And Jedi trainees would now be taken into the Order as infants, before they could be exposed to the temptations of the material world. [The new essential guide to warfare by jason fry]

Again, because the Order wasn’t an army at the time no one could *force* them do to anything, in terms of armed or even political action. To keep it short, being part of the Judicial Department didn’t put the Jedi Order in a position where they *HAD* to allow the Chancellor to spend some alone time with a 12 years old boy. That kind of rhetoric is, imo, pretty disgusting because it puts the blame of the all the abuse Anakin suffered on Palpatine’s shoulder and on his main victim who also happened to be a little boy at the time.

The Jedi Order had a choice.

Each time civilization threatened to topple into ruin, the Jedi faced a momentous decision: Did the Republic’s survival require the Order to intervene directly in its affairs? At various points in galactic history, the Jedi reluctantly decided such intervention was necessary. They stepped in to prevent the young Republic from annihilating the Tionese, plotted in secret to overthrow the Pius Dea chancellory, and served as chancellors while directly ruling large swaths of Republic territory in the chaotic centuries before Ruusan. Each time, the Order surrendered the powers it had assumed, returning to its guardian role. But as the Republic decayed and the Separatists gained strength, the Jedi began to once again debate whether a more activist role was required. By 22 BBY matters had reached a crisis point. This time it was the Supreme Chancellor himself who ASKED the Jedi to assume a new role: A powerful army awaited Republic command, but the Judicial Forces were ill prepared to lead them. Mindful that the Separatists were led by the Jedi apostate Count Dooku, the Jedi AGREED to lead the Grand Army to Geonosis in an attempt to short-circuit the Separatist threat. [The new essential guide to warfare by jason fry]

They had such independence from the Chancellor they felt justified in lying to his office and withholding information:

The Jedi Master rubbed a hand over his forehead and looked to Yoda, who sat with his eyes closed. Probably contemplating the same riddles as he was, Mace knew. And equally troubled, if not more so. “Blind we are, if the development of this clone army we could not see,” Yoda remarked. “I think it is time to inform the Senate that our ability to use the Force has diminished.” “Only the Dark Lords of the Sith know of our weakness,” Yoda replied. “If informed the Senate is, multiply our adversaries will.” For the two Jedi Masters, this surprising development was troubling on several different levels. [R.A. Salvatore. Attack of the Clones]

To make that even clearer, we have the Naboo crisis where Qui-Gon and Obi-wan’s involvement was the result of the Chancellor personally *requesting* the Council to investigate the situation.

“Under normal circumstances, the Council wouldn’t have subverted the authority of the Senate by honoring Valorum’s request to send Jedi to Naboo. But for Yoda, Mace Windu, and the rest, Valorum is a known quantity, whereas Senators Antilles and Teem and you have yet to disclose your true agendas. Take you, for instance. Most are aware that you are a career politician, and that you’ve managed thus far to avoid imbroglios. But what does anyone know about you beyond your voting record, or the fact that you reside in Five Hundred Republica? We all think that there’s much more to you than meets the eye, as it were; something about you that has yet to be uncovered.” Instead of speaking directly to Dooku’s point, Palpatine said, “I was as surprised as anyone to learn that Master Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan Kenobi were sent to Naboo.” [James Luceno. Darth Plagueis]

If the Chancellor’s office, ddin’t have the power to force the Jedi Order into accepting a slave army, preventing a planetary invison or turning themselves into soldiers I highly doubt they would have the power to force them to give up a child a few hours a week. It doesn’t make any sense.

Here what the lore has to say about how the Jedi viewed Anakin’s relationship with the Chancellor.

Sate Pestage showed Obi-Wan Kenobi and his young Padawan, Anakin Skywalker, into Palpatine’s temporary office in the Senate Building. Both Jedi were wearing light-colored tunics, brown robes, and tall boots. Facsimiles of each other. “Thank you both for accepting my invitation,” Palpatine said, coming out from behind a broad, burnished desk to welcome them. “Sit please, both of you,” he added, gesturing to chairs that faced the desk and the large window behind it. [James Luceno. Darth Plagueis]

Yoda stared at the floor, both hands grasping his gimer stick. There was no easy answer to that. Yes, he was concerned by Palpatine’s attachment to the boy. No matter how well-meaning, no matter how genuine and heartfelt, the Supreme Chancellor’s care for Obi-Wan’s apprentice was problematic. The root cause of all young Skywalker’s difficulties was his need for emotional connections. His friendship with Palpatine only complicated matters. But the man was Supreme Chancellor. And he meant well. Sometimes politics had to take precedence.[Karen Miller. Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Wild Space]

I would think that Anakin’s friendship with Palpatine could be of use to us in this—he has the kind of access to Palpatine that other Jedi might only dream of. Their friendship is an asset, not a danger.” [Obi-wan Kenobi in Matthew Stover’s Revenge of the Sith]

As for this comic, it’s not part of the original lore but I’ve talked about it in detail here if you’re interested. But the gist remains, the had a choice and saying the jedi shouldn’t have done anything more to protect Anakin is a pretty gross take. Anyway, I don’t know about you but this doesn’t read to me like ‘we tried everything we could to keep this child away from Palpatine’.

Because I know people will twist this into ‘ShE haTeS thE jeDi’ allow me to clarify that this, all of this, is a good thing. It shows the Jedi had free will to make choices and the fact the made mistakes is what makes them such human, relatable characters. Also, it fits perfectly with the themes George set out to explore.

The prequel trilogy is based on a back-story outline Lucas created in the mid-1970s for the original three “Star Wars” movies, so the themes percolated out of the Vietnam War and the Nixon-Watergate era, he said. Lucas began researching how democracies can turn into dictatorships with full consent of the electorate. In ancient Rome, “why did the senate after killing Caesar turn around and give the government to his nephew?” Lucas said. “Why did France after they got rid of the king and that whole system turn around and give it to Napoleon? It’s the same thing with Germany and Hitler. "You sort of see these recurring themes where a democracy turns itself into a dictatorship, and it always seems to happen kind of in the same way, with the same kinds of issues, and threats from the outside, needing more control. A democratic body, a senate, not being able to function properly because everybody’s squabbling, there’s corruption.”

The story being told in ‘Star Wars’ is a classic one. Every few hundred years, the story is retold because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again. Power corrupts, and when you’re in charge, you start doing things that you think are right, but they’re actually not.” George Lucas

“All of these things that are wrapped up in Ahsoka’s story, which ultimately make her realize what the audience realizes. “I love the Jedi Order. They’re very important to me, I’ve always respected them. But there’s something wrong here, and I need to walk away from it to assess it.” It all feeds into Revenge of the Sith when the chancellor says, “The Jedi have just made an attempt on my life.” When you see these four episodes, I think you have a better understanding of how he gets away with all of that, because you see how compromised the Jedi Council is.” Dave Filoni

Because on a certain level, you have to accept that the Jedi lose the Clone War. So there is something that they’re doing that’s wrong.” Dave Filoni

Holding the jedi accountable for their actions is not about hating them, is about recognizing the story George was trying to tell with these human characters and their very, very human flaws. Saying they should’ve done more to help Anakin, the slaves or the clones is not the same as saying they are as evil as Palpatine or simply bad people. Heroes makes mistakes, and the Jedi mistakes don’t make their actions less heroic or their deaths less tragic. The same way that Anakin’s crimes as Vader doesn’t erase the good he did as Anakin. if we can admit Anakin killed a lot of innocents *AND* that he was a great master to Ahsoka, I really can’t understand why some fans have such hard time accepting the same is true for all the characters. We all make shitty choices sometimes but that doesn’t necessarily makes shitty people. that truth, that very human truth is at the core of this issue. Same people can accept this, others can’t.

#ask #anon #gffa politics #sw meta #meta: fandom #jedi order #jedi politics #txt

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frumfrumfroo · 5 years ago

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Why do you think Luke struggles with temptations toward pragmatism and control? (If you don't mind! this piqued my curiosity since this is the first time I've seen him described as such, and I find him excessively idealistic and upright throughout the OT)

Luke is very all or nothing as a rule and he was raised by a worried practical person. When he first refuses the call to adventure, it’s because faced with the reality of dropping everything he thinks about the implications in a way he never has in his daydreams. And his objection is along the lines of just being one small person and real life still needing to get lived and not being able to just abandon his responsibilities. ‘It’s not that I like the Empire, I hate it, but there’s nothing I can do about it right now.’

And Obi-wan says, ‘That’s your uncle talking.’ And we heard also that Owen has been afraid of exactly this kind of thing Luke’s whole life. ‘Follow old Obi-wan on some damn fool idealistic crusade like your father did.’ So consider this fear and Owen’s attitude as one of the major threads running through Luke’s childhood and what kind of influence that had on him. Duty and responsibility are small, household things according to the people who raised him, not grand epic things. People are most important, not cause.

Luke is also a care-taker by nature. He latches on to people and invests in them very easily. The thing that gets him off his ass isn’t the Rebellion or finding out more about his father, those weren’t quite enough, what pushes him to action is the idea that Leia is out there and no one else is going to rescue her. One person, an individual, not the cause. Luke’s decision to believe in Han and to insist he was a better person than he would admit regardless of the evidence drove Han to live up to his expectations. But you know, he basically demanded Han redeem himself and won’t compromise. He’s stubborn and angry. He repeatedly ignores Obi-wan’s advice and instructions and fucks up life-or-death plans because he feels the need to take things into his own hands.

In ESB, he ignores Yoda’s warnings and advice to again take things into his own hands despite being told that will make everything that’s been accomplished vain. He won’t accept that he personally can’t change anything. He takes responsibility for people to the point where their choices don’t matter to him, but in doing this he’s shirking his larger responsibility as The Hero. It’s the I’m gonna save you, anyway energy. Which is certainly idealism and certainly what allows him to eventually save Anakin, but it also nearly gets them all killed on numerous occasions. Maturity is balance between taking no responsibility and taking responsibility for everything, always until your inevitable martyrdom.

As for pragmatism- that is his temptation in the throne room. It’s not about ultimate power in itself, because Luke has never sought power as an end and that’s not a dramatically effective temptation for him. What the Emperor is selling him is the idea that he can use this power to save his friends. He can use this power to shape the galaxy as he sees fit, to create safety for the people he cares about and impose his concept of justice. The temptation is to place practical concerns over ideals, to privilege safety over freedom, privilege individuals he loves over their choices and the cause. Kill Vader because he’s just one already dying warlord who deserves a much worse fate than merciful death, it’s justified, it’s a release; kill him and you will be able to save them. This is your only chance, you have to take it, you’ll be strong enough to only give in a little bit- replace Vader and use the power properly. Save the people who deserve to be saved. You can be trusted to wield justice, you can control it.

That is a very dramatically effective temptation for Luke, because that’s all thinking he’s been shown to have. His priorities over the past two films have aligned with this apparent ultimatum.

The terms the Emperor lays out are that Luke can either concede that killing his father is a ‘necessary evil’ in order to serve the ‘greater good’ and therefore set himself on the path to becoming his father OR he can die uselessly in a doomed moral victory which will result in the end of the Rebellion and the last hope going out of the universe.

Pragmatism says you need to use hate and violence to beat the big bad, you need to sacrifice other people to the cause, you need to keep your head down sometimes and try to live the best life you can under the circumstances, you need to be neutral sometimes, turn a blind eye sometimes, you can’t take a chance on shady people, you can’t save the scourge of the galaxy because he’s too far gone and not worth it, etc. Owen, Obi-wan, Yoda, every authority in his life has reinforced the same binary choice the Emperor now presents between compromise with evil or death.

And Luke is tempted by this because he thinks he can control these outcomes. He thinks it’s his place to keep his people safe no matter what it takes. He flies off the handle when Vader threatens Leia because he doesn’t want her put in this position. He wants to bear this whole burden and always thinks he can, and that protective impulse, that refusal to accept bad situations for others when he can fix it, is the beautiful part of his personality which Palpatine is counting on in his manipulation. It’s always a natural human impulse which can turn to selfishness that someone like Palpatine or Snoke will exploit. Love becomes covetousness, protection becomes control, fear dominates everything.

What Luke eventually rejects is exactly those terms, the whole premise of Palpatine’s argument. He takes a third option. The problem was never that he felt anger or that he passionately wanted to protect people, the terms he rejects are that the ends justify the means and that hate is inevitable. It’s never too late because forgiveness is always possible, because love is unconditional. Pragmatism has no place in a decision about your soul and the value of a person’s life, the value of a person’s life is infinite. The fact that Luke’s faith and selflessness is rewarded is the idealism of Star Wars, but it resonates because it was difficult for him. Cynicism was holding all the cards and his own best instincts were telling him he had to sacrifice principle to live another day, that that was the loving thing to do, he slips into fear and revenge and despair like a dozen times; he wails on his father and only stops because he sees his mechanical hand and remembers where that path leads- we all know how he feels. Metaphorically, we’ve all been there, in the darkest hour, not entirely certain what’s right and afraid of the answer.

In TLJ, Luke’s arc is about learning to forgive himself the way he once forgave Anakin. And it’s exactly the same dilemma about whether the ends justify the means and the danger of surrendering to fatalism and practicality over diligent hope and universal compassion. He tried to take on the entire burden of the family legacy by himself to spare Leia, and tried to take all responsibility for Ben and Ben’s future, that made it something he needed to control. The new added layer is a meta one about being a legend (really, being a hero) and a semi-meta one about ageing and mentorship. As a parent and teacher, Luke reflects his parents and his teachers, but he’s also very much still dealing with exactly the same flaws he has always had. Because ‘being a good person’ isn’t a birthright or a one time achievement, it’s a choice you make every day.

#luke #writing #star wars #tlj #redemption #space crime and punishment

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thevagueambition · 5 years ago

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I was tagged by @antirococoreaction to talk about five male characters I love

(God, only five? However will I choose between my boys >_< ?!)

This is most certainly not going to be a literary as your offerings, lmao. When it comes to literary fiction I mostly like Kafka and Kafka, by the nature of his writing, writes thoroughly unlikable characters.

This got way too long bc I’m incapable of not gushing about my faves when given the chance lol

Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender

It is my enduring opinion that if you want to see a redemption arc done right, look at Zuko’s arc in The Last Airbender. He’s a scared, abused kid who managed to build up personal morals in a system that discouraged them, and was harshly punished for daring to voice them. He’s someone who always wanted to be good, but struggles with defining what good is, given that his culture and upbringing has taught him one thing, but his heart (and his uncle) tells him another, and his new experiences reinforces that. After he figures out what “good” looks like, he’s always held accountable for his past actions. He makes amends, and he accepts it, for the most part, when people aren’t ready to receive them. His anger issues, as well as how he sees himself as someone who had to be hardworking because he isn’t talented (however far from the truth that may or may not be in reality) are also aspects of him that appeal to me and indeed that I relate to.

Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars

My love for Anakin is not dissimilar to my love for Zuko, though the quality of the writing in question certainly is. I love an edgy boy, is what I’m getting at, I guess :’D More seriously, Anakin’s story is ultimately one about control, which is a subject that interests me quite a bit. Anakin is never, at any point, really in control of his own life. He’s never really truly free. He’s born a slave, he joins the Jedi Order and he becomes Palpatine’s apprentice. He always exists within rigid systems of control, until his very lasts moments with Luke before he dies. With how Palpatine essentially groomed him, thinking of Anakin as equally a victim of Palpatine and a perpetuator of his (metaphorically speaking) abuse is also interesting to me. Certainly his clearly distorted thinking (eg convincing himself he can’t trust Obi-Wan, for instance) is also hugely important to his appeal to me. Also? He’s SO EXTRA I can’t with him lol

(That’s your LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM you turned off, Anakin!!! I know you’re depressed and dissociated and also The Drama but damn!!!!!!)

Nicodemus Ravens from The Shamer Chronicles (Skammerens børn)

The Shamer Chronicles is a series of Danish fantasy books for kids, and probably the most popular books of that type (particularly the first book, The Shamer’s Daughter). Nico is a major character, though never a POV one.

Nico was, essentially, abused by his father for not living up to the male gender role. He didn’t want to learn to use a sword, he didn’t want to kill, and his father hated him for it. As a result, he’s a teenage alcoholic and profoundly at war with himself. He constantly have other people telling him narratives about who he is/should be: first, he’s the younger son who should bring his father glory, then he’s the heir unfit for the throne, then he’s, depending on the political position of the character in question, either a monstrous murderer who must be killed by the glorious leader or the rightful heir to throne, a hero ready to bring war to his enemy and liberate his people, then rule them in benevolence.

Nico doesn’t want to be any of those things. He knows who he is, is stubborn about it, but also can’t shake the belief that his relative pacifism is really just cowardice. I’m just going to quote one of my favourite scenes here (forgive the translation, it’s my own, I don’t have the official one at hand):

“[...] They want a hero, I think.”

“Is that so bad? It’s better than being a monster, at any rate.”

“You think? Have you noticed how often heroes die in battle? Of course everyone mourns them afterwards and write beautiful ballads about them, but the heroes remain dead. Stone-dead. And I’m in no hurry to get on my white steed and start slaughtering people until someone better or luckier than I sticks a sword in me. No, thank you.”

He looked both obstinate and shameful, as if he thought he really should get on his white steed and all of that. I could understand why he didn’t want to die, and yet… Well, I think I’d always expected him to return to the Lowlands to fight Drakan at some point.

“What do you want, then?” [...]

“I just want to be me,” he whispered. “Is that so terrible? I just want to be Nico and not a lot of other people’s hero or monster.”

Anyway there are Two Crimes when it comes to Nico: the fact he isn’t gay in canon and how so many adaptations turns him into the Generic Fantasy Hero he’s a very conscious subversion of in the books (the other principle male character is essentially someone who’s hurt by toxic masculinity as someone who buys into it, while Nico ofc is hurt by it because he doesn’t/can’t, so the series certainly had an opinion about it).

Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter

Dumbledore is, to me, someone who chose what was good for the world over his own happiness. He chose to be the one to dirty his hands, the one two make the terrible decisions, do the terrible things, that were necessary in the battle against facism. There is something very brave and admirable about that to me. It’s not that he never did anything wrong, he certainly did, but again, I think he was very aware of the terrible things he was doing, and part of the reason he keeps everything so close to his chest is because he doesn’t want anyone else to have to make those decisions, to have to feel that blood stain their hands. Dumbledore loves the people in his care profoundly, he loves Harry profoundly. And it kills him to have, as Snape puts it, “brought him up like a pig for slaughter”.

Whether something is morally justified and whether it’s necessary to prevent evil are two different questions, and I don’t think Dumbledore feels particularly justified, but I do think he does what he perceives to be necessary to prevent facism. And hates himself for the decisions he takes along the way. And all of that comes back to, to some extent, his survivor’s guilt over the death of Arianna and the profound wake up call that was Grindelwald 1) turning on his family 2) being a very violent fascist, rather than just a theoretical one like teenage!Dumbledore was. In his mind, Dumbledore is already condemned for what happened when he was 18, so it’s better that it be he who takes the terrible things upon himself than an “innocent.” It’s better that he try to atone. Dumbledore is working towards a redemption he never (to his mind) arrives at.

In regards to his sexuality, Dumbledore was certainly written with the trope of a “tragic old closeted gay” in mind, but of course JKR never made anything much canon aside from his “flamboyant” sense of style (that the movies have ROBBED us of >:( ) and hobbies, so to a certain extent, I get to ignore that homophobic intent. In the books themselves, the only thing you can really read between the lines is that Dumbledore was in love with Grindelwald, not whether it was 1) reciprocated 2) acted upon, so with only the canon, we also get to mitigate some of the Implications of “Dumbledore dated Wizard Hitler for a while”....

I mean I do Love Mess(tm) so Dumbledore having that terrible wake up call is certainly also part of the appeal for me. Personally I enjoy the interpretation that Grindelwald deliberately manipulated Dumbledore’s feelings.

Captain Flint/James McGraw from Black Sails

BE GAY DO CRIME BE GAY DO CRIME BE GAY DO CRIME BE-- *coughs*

As you might guess from my description of Dumbledore, a lot of the reasons I love Flint are similar to why I love Dumbledore (and Solas, but we won’t go in to Solas rn lol). Flint is also someone who chooses to do the terrible, necessary things, who chooses the fight over his personal moral cleanliness. In a more obvious and extreme way than Dumbledore, certainly, but the principle is essentially the same. Of course, Flint’s fight is personal in a completely different way from how Dumbledore’s is. Flint’s fight is simoultaneously his revenge, a fight against the corrupt system that ruined his life and a fight for something better. Dumbledore is defensive, Flint is offensive.

The self-integrity he has is truly amazing. He’s cast aside by everyone but Miranda, and yet he never starts thinking he has anything to apologise for. To ask for a pardon would be to ask for forgiveness, and he doesn’t think he needs to be forgiven. Not for loving Thomas, not for anything he did while he was still English. He perceives the reality of the situation, he sees what is right and what is wrong, and he knows that he is the wronged party. He stares at the behemoth of the entire social structure of his world and says: No. You move. I am not in the wrong. England should apologise to me.

Flint is my angry gay dad and I love him.

I tag (as always, completely optional ^^ ): @teddy-stonehill @thebearmuse @andvaka @solitarelee @gallifreyanathearts @sinni-ok-sessi @melle93 @papanden @seimsisk

I feel a bit dishonest leaving Grantaire off of this list, lmao, but I talk about him enough as it is.

Other honorables mentions go to: Enjolras (Les Mis), Captain Jack Harkness (Doctor Who/Torchwood), Solas (Dragon Age), Fitzwilliam Darcy (Pride and Prejudice), Kim Kitsuragi (Disco Elysium), Harry Potter, Remus Lupin (Harry Potter) and my soap boys Robert Sugden (Emmerdale), Richard “Ringo” Beckmann (Unter Uns) and Ben Mitchell (Eastenders).

#someone: like a none edgy boy me: a what now #not that nico is that edgy #btw if i had been the type to name myself after fictional characters it would have 100% been nico #the movie adaptation does not deserve rights #also re dumbledore jkr is like ''he turned into a bit of a celibate after grindelwald'' and i'm like nah NAH fuck off #siggi rambles #tag meme #my meta

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kalinara · 5 years ago

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So I was having thoughts about a possible Kylo Ren redemption arc again, and why the idea really doesn’t work for me.

Now really, I don’t think it’s going to happen anyway. I think the Last Jedi basically put the kibosh on that concept when it dismantled every bit of Kylo Ren apologia that his fans have ever uttered. But let’s be honest, sometimes creators make very bad decisions. So I suppose it’s still possible.

There’s no way that it can be remotely satisfying though.

The thing about a redemption arc that I think a lot of people miss is that a redemption arc serves a point in the overall story. It’s not just about the character in question. In a way, it’s not even about that character at all, it’s about the role that character plays in the central narrative.

There are main characters and there are side characters, there are allies and there are villains. And ultimately, everything that happens happens to serve the main character(s) story.

Now it is true that some villains are main characters of their stories. Daenerys Targaryen is a good example of this. We followed Daenerys basically from her origin. We saw her grow and change, we saw her defeat and her triumph. We saw her do some amazingly good things and some horribly monstrous ones. The seeds of her fate were planted early on, but there were also plenty of indications that she could go another way. Her fall was tragic (if maybe not the best executed) and we were with her every step of the way.

Kylo Ren is no Daenerys Targaryen and he has never been a protagonist. He’s no Daenerys Targaryen. He’s not even a Tony Soprano or a Walter White. By the time we’re introduced to him, he’s already a monster. He’s already ordering the deaths of an entire village. He’s in the process of murdering an unarmed man. And he’s in the process of hunting one of our protagonists, while another is an enslaved follower.

Each one of Kylo Ren’s appearances in both movies serve to push the actual main characters forward. His massacre causes Finn to rebel. His torture of Poe leads to their alliance and escape. His kidnapping of Rey causes her to learn to defend herself instinctively with the force. His murder of Han fills our heroes with motivating grief and rage. Even in the Last Jedi, while we have lip service to Kylo Ren’s angst and possible redemption, what we really end up with is a plot that shows Rey her own vulnerability and arrogance. He exists, basically, so she can be wrong about him. So that she can be betrayed and return to her people a wiser person.

He is not a protagonist. He’s not a main character. He’s a villain to be defeated. He’s an obstacle to be thwarted. He exists for their stories.

Darth Vader comes up a lot in these discussions. Because of course, Darth Vader is the one who was redeemed. There are a lot of discussions about whether or not Kylo is “better” or “worse” than Vader, when we’re talking about his potential redemption. And I think that’s a bit of a trap. It doesn’t really matter if Vader was better or worse than Kylo, because Vader’s redemption was never really about Darth Vader. it was about Luke Skywalker.

Luke Skywalker started the Original Trilogy with a very clear (wrong) idea about who his father was. (A pilot, war hero.) And soon he had very clear ideas about what a Jedi Knight was. He knew that Darth Vader was the man who killed his father. He knew what he had to do. He blew up the Death Star and saved the galaxy. He went to the ends of the universe on the whim of a ghost to badger his way into training. He fought the most powerful Force User ever, surprisingly effectively for someone with a few days to a few weeks of training. But then he was blindsided by the truth.

Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi is a very very different man than Luke Skywalker in A New Hope. He’s older, wiser, sadder and more scarred. And even though Yoda and Obi-Wan have both told him that he has to defeat his enemy, he knows that as a Jedi, he has to do more than that. He has to be more than that. At the pivotal point, he throws away his saber. He reaches his father. His faith and love is rewarded.

That’s LUKE’s triumph. That’s LUKE’s story. It’s Vader’s too, sure, but it’s important for what it means to Luke.

Rey isn’t Luke. If anything, she’s in the opposite position. She grew up with a very different idea of the Jedi. She knew the myth of Luke Skywalker and she knew that he saved Darth Vader. And when he rejected her as a student, she decided that she had to prove herself by repeating his act. She was going to save Kylo Ren.

That was her Cloud City error. That was her equivalent of Luke trying to kill Vader. She didn’t want to save Kylo because he was family. She didn’t want to save Kylo because she loved him. She didn’t KNOW him yet. He was the man who tortured her. She was mislead (by Snoke) into thinking there was something she could reach. And she really wanted to prove Luke wrong. It was ego, and she got hit hard for it when he betrayed her all over again.

Like Luke, Rey was wrong. Like Luke, Rey was injured by it. And like Luke, she’s going to come out of it as a wiser person.

If Kylo Ren does have a redemption arc, that would negate all of Rey’s development in the Last Jedi. Rey was a character for whom everything Force related came easily, too easily by a lot of fan complaints, but that’s why her arc in TLJ was so important. She had to be wrong. She had to learn humility. If she were then proven to be right after all, then she’s got no reason to be a wiser person.

So Rey doesn’t benefit from Kylo Ren’s redemption. Who might?

Leia doesn’t. She had a similar story beat in the Force Awakens. She wanted Han to save her son. He tried and Kylo skewered him. In the Last Jedi, she’s sadder and wiser and when Luke tells her that he will have to fight Kylo and kill him, she accepts that. I’m sure she would be overjoyed to see a Kylo Ren reject the Dark Side, but that’s not the same as an ending to her story. It’s not something that she fought for or earned. (Perhaps things might have been different if she could have a bigger role in Rise of the Skywalker. But unfortunately, her story is fundamentally done.)

It doesn’t benefit Finn or Poe either. Both of them have suffered at the hands of Kylo Ren. And it would make some sense to have a storyline where they have to move past their anger and hate of him. Except, well, that’s not something that the movies have cared to address. When the Last Jedi sidelined both characters, it neatly moved them into plots that had nothing to do with Kylo Ren. Poe is learning to lead (execution of said plot notwithstanding), Finn is coming to terms with his past. Kylo’s irrelevant to the first, and just one face out of many abusers for the second. (It’s more likely that his direct adversary will be Hux, who advocated for the Stormtrooper program that his father started, who hit him and subjugated him directly in TLJ. It’s a much more personal tie than Kylo.) They’d need a whole other movie to establish Kylo’s redemption as being significant in some way to either man.

Han’s story doesn’t benefit. There are those who will claim that he “died for nothing if Kylo isn’t redeemed”. But narratively speaking, he didn’t “die for nothing”. He died to show us that Kylo wasn’t Anakin, and that Kylo wasn’t going to choose his grandfather’s fate.

And honestly, even Kylo Ren’s story doesn’t benefit from a redemption arc. On a narrative level, how would that even work. “Okay, so, I know Kylo has been offered redemption at least three times now and he responded by murdering Lor San Tekka, Han Solo, and trying to murder Rey. The Prequels took the pre-established ending of Return of the Jedi and built a story for Anakin around it. We learned that fundamentally, love and family were at the core of Anakin’s motivation. He fell because of love and he let himself be saved because of love.

But Kylo Ren is OFFERED that kind of love. Han Solo, weeping and unarmed, reaches out to his son only to be skewered. He REJECTS that love. Familial love is not enough.

Rey, a woman that he’s clearly attracted to, makes the same offer. No strings attached. No familial baggage to be an excuse. She reaches out to him, just like every single Reylo-is-canon sort insisted that she should do. And he REJECTS her too. Romantic love is not enough.

There are a lot of debates about whether or not Snoke was abusive, and to what extent he may have influenced Kylo. And certainly the idea of Kylo teaming up with Rey and company to defeat his abuser is an attractive one to a lot of people. Except, well, that actually happens. He and Rey DID team up. They DID kill Snoke. And Kylo Ren ordered his army to stand down, killed Hux when he tried to stop him, and went home peacefully. Wait no, sorry, he took command and doubled down his efforts to murder every last member of the Resistance.

So that means for a redemption arc to work, the writers will have to give us something that is more important to Kylo than family, romantic love, or being free from an abuser to finally reach him and move him off of the path he’s on. Murdering innocent people wasn’t enough, enslaving millions of children wasn’t enough, destroying FIVE PLANETS wasn’t enough.

This isn’t even an Adalind from Grimm sort of situation where her self interest can be used to justify hanging around with the good guys enough to appreciate that they, unlike her previous allies, won’t hang her out to dry. Kylo Ren has literally nothing to plausibly make him want to be a better person.

I can’t say whether Lucasfilms will try to pull off a Kylo Ren redemption arc in the eleventh hour, but I can say that they shouldn’t.

#poor little serial killer #anti kylo ren

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iabsolutelyresentthiswebsite · 7 years ago

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The Main Case For Rey Skywalker

Now, I have posted theories upon theories upon evidence upon justifications of why Rey is Rey Skywalker and I explained why I think she is Rey Skywalker.

The allusions, the hints, the logical nature of the small leap of faith, the level of dynamism that can and likely will be present in all the relationships in this universe once she is revealed to be a Skywalker, the amount of plot elements that would be put into play because of the parentage, the possible unfolding of various different story-arcs solely because she is a Skywalker, every single thing that happened in The Force Awakens that illustrated to anyone really watching the movie that she is what I say she is...the fact of the matter is: Rey Skywalker is in the best interest of the franchise.

I say this because it is the truth, not because I want it to be. Rey Skywalker would precipitate a myriad of different beneficial outcomes in the form of diverse relationships, intensification of internal and external conflicts, fascinating and likely painful exposition, a reliving of hurtful events and a sore past, and- if done properly- the eventual logical and satisfying end to Star Wars.

However, I make the main case for Rey Skywalker not for that reason, but for another.

Someone close to the franchise said something to this effect: “It doesn’t matter who her parents are”. Some people, especially Reylos (A/N: I understand why you don’t want her to be Rey Skywalker, so your argument against this is justified because you don’t want to ship incest. I get it. Nothing against you guys.), like to say that because of that, “there is no way she is Rey Skywalker because it would contradict that.”

No. It wouldn’t. It completely validates Rey Skywalker.

Her being Rey Skywalker is literally the only thing that does not require substantial exposition in order to justify The Force Awakens.

* Anyone with eyes can see all the parallels between her and Luke, and even Anakin. Her emergence into Star Wars perfectly resembles the emergence of a Skywalker in the saga. It’s why so many people are fiercely pro-ReySky. It makes sense. It’s literally in front of you. We see it, too. We see what they are trying to make us recognize. That we recognized it as a parallel is no mistake. It’s not simply to “bite off” of A New Hope. Everything in cinema is done for a reason and a prevalent reason why people are so against TFA is because they felt exactly that- “it’s a rehashing of A New Hope”, but not if she’s Rey Skywalker. Then it makes sense.

Saying she is Rey Skywalker justifies and validates the parallels and reuse of visual representations. And this requires no explanation on the part of the writers or directors, it will happen once she’s revealed to be what many believe her to be.

If she happens to be a Kenobi, various questions are raised.

How did Han know who she was when Maz asked, which is clearly alluded to? Han knew Obi Wan for like a few days.

How does Kylo have a “Force-bond” with her? He never met Obi Wan and he clearly does not understand the true nature of Anakin Skywalker, who was affiliated with him. (And do not give me “It’s love!” I’ll bite you with that bullshit.)

If a lightsaber is basically the life-force of its wielder, why would Luke/Anakin’s saber choose Rey over Kylo? Kylo is blood-related, Rey Kenobi would not be.

Why is Rey’s emergence in the saga almost identical to Luke’s? It would boil this down to simple laziness and “biting” off of A New Hope, which severely delegitimizes The Force Awakens.

And those are just 4 questions I thought of in like 2 minutes at 4am. If she’s neither a Skywalker nor a Kenobi, there is so much exposition necessary it would actually take a whole movie to help us understand it!

Many people say this other thing...that if she is a Skywalker, she has to “live up to the Skywalker name”.

Wh-what the hell does that mean?

Her grandfather would have been one of the most powerful Sith lords in their history and her father would be one of the most powerful Jedi.

Living up to the Skywalker name is embracing the Force, which she’s already done and will continue to do in the next movie. That alone legitimizes her being a Skywalker and from that, I can move on.

The biggest element of my post here is this:

There are so many legitimate ways she could be a Skywalker, of which I- and others- have posted many, that giving any kind of explanation why she was on Jakku that includes the desire to hide or protect her is literally explanation enough.

I truly do not believe the person or people who left her on Jakku were her biological family, save Kylo Ren, who may have spared his little cousin’s life because he loved her. And if it was, it was likely not Luke or his wife themselves. It was extended family or friends who were trying to protect her. People knew Luke had a daughter, thus putting a target on this 4-year-old’s back, and wanted her on one of the most inconspicuous planets they could possibly find at the time, “that junkyard”, Jakku. It was far, far away from the Resistance, the First Order, and The Force, freeing her from all of her perceived obligations. Saying that people were trying to protect her or hide her makes her presence on Jakku make sense, but really only if she’s a Skywalker.

Her being a Skywalker requires little to no exposition because The Force Awakens told us she was.

Moreover, it is literally the only parentage that means nothing- and everything at the same time- in the grand scheme of everything.

Her being a Skywalker legitimizes a lot, opens up a lot of possibilities, precipitates events and character development, but does not change anything about who she is.

No, it does not shift the focus to Luke.

No, it does not shift the focus to the Skywalker family...(dude, it’s already there! it’s always been there!)

And NO, it does not change anything about her.

She simply gets a family she’s always wanted, but with a caveat that the family is messed up.

I sit back and imagine Luke saying, “Rey, I am your father” and smile...for no other reason than the fact she now has a dad, an aunt, and a lunatic cousin...(okay, also because I’m validated!)

She still can develop her abilities and she has nothing to live up to. Her grandfather was a Jedi-turned-Sith, her father is a ‘Jedi’, her cousin is obsessed with the Sith grandfather, and her aunt is very Force-sensitive, but did not train. It’s literally at a 50%-50% with the family so far.

She can make her own choices. Make her own decisions. Prove herself, which she desires to. Find her calling, find her own truth. Choose her own destiny.

She has so much going for her and she is trying to find her “place in all of this”, truly, what better way than to have your dad showing you one side and your cousin trying to get you to the other?

She can become so powerful in both sides of the Force and we don’t really need to know which one because the Skywalkers do not have the best track-record in that department.

It would be her and Kylo’s stories, both battling the Light and the Darkness. Both of them have so much of both sides inside of themselves.

Her being Rey Skywalker affects nothing except her last name, should she choose to accept it. She can still be Rey. I only call her Rey Skywalker to show others how steadfastly I believe in Luke being her father, but it does not change who she is at all.

It, truly, means nothing for her to be Rey Skywalker in the grand scheme of things, except it emphasizes the urgency and escalates conflicts, both of which is good for storytelling, without sacrificing or changing her character at all.

That Skywalker would be her last name would only and solely act as a catalyst to improve the story and add tension.

So no, it does not matter who her parents are, even if she’s a Skywalker because her being one does not jeopardize her characterization, only serves to improve, and validates everything.

#rey skywalker #virginia speaks #the case for rey skywalker #star wars

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gch1995 · 3 years ago

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I wouldn’t say that Obi-Wan and Yoda are framed as completely justified in their morally dubious actions, behaviors, choices, and mistreatments of Anakin, Ahsoka, Luke, the clones, and the rest of the Jedi. No, the entire Order and Republic didn’t deserve mass murder, but the fact that they made a decision to hide away from the problems they helped create with Anakin, even if unintentionally, left Anakin to burn alive, and made a decision to repeatedly enable and perpetuate systematic abuse, classism, corruption, hypocrisy, manipulation, and oppression “for the greater good” of their Order and the Republic because it became easier and safer than taking a risk to do what they knew was right, had negative consequences for both themselves and the galaxy at large.

They lost Anakin’s trust and respect, and while he wasn’t right to murder their entire Order, he also wasn’t wrong to distrust and dislike Obi-Wan, Yoda, and the Jedi Council either. Obi-Wan, Yoda, and the Council willfully systematically abused, deceived, gaslit, groomed, isolated, and emotionally neglected this child to try to use him as a weapon for their own purposes, even though they knew it would be more difficult for him because he had already been a child slave and known real life outside of their cult of total emotional/individual denial well enough to recognize it was abnormal. Instead, Obi-Wan, Yoda, and the Council decided Anakin was the problem, rather than taking the opportunity to examine their own flaws in their pride and fear of the unknown, so they paid for it by helping turn Anakin into their greatest enemy instead.

They lost Ahsoka’s trust and respect for good reason, and fuck the writers of TBOBF for retconning that. She had every right to dislike Yoda, Obi-Wan, and the Council because none of them had her back, except for Anakin, but the writers of Disney don’t want to acknowledge canonical evidence that the “heroes” of Star Wars were canonically abusive in the old Order.

They were negligent of the slave army they accepted from Palpatine “for the greater good,” he took advantage of Yoda’s and the Council’s willful negligence, and used that against them.

If Luke had followed their advice in the OT, he probably would have taken his dad’s place as Sidious’s apprentice.

The problem really is Disney and much of this fandom. They just refuse to accept that Obi-Wan, Yoda, and the Jedi Council of the prequels were deeply flawed static characters who were meant to set up Luke reforming the Order into a healthy balance.

Do you believe that writers of detective stories are actually real-life murderers, because they decide to have fictional people killed? What about fanfic writers who like hurt/comfort fics? Are they all closet sadists? I mean no offense to you, but bejeesus... I guess my main problem is that I simply don't empathize with idea of paying the blood price of thousands of lives for one man's "one true love". Everybody except Vader could have lived without Padmé just fine. His own problem he couldn't.

Sure, nonny. You don’t have to find Anakin/Darth Vader likable or relatable. You can hate him for his crimes. He had a selfish side. That’s valid. However, there’s a major difference between wanting for a character to be punished for their crimes versus telling them to commit suicide as a “joke.” What you’re suggesting Obi-Wan “jokingly” tell Anakin is fucked up.

It’s also worth noting that Anakin’s not the only one who endangered, ended, or sacrificed thousands of lives, including children, for his personal “greater good” to cover up out of fear of the unknown. While not as bad as the Empire/Sith, the old Jedi and Republic did, too.

#obi wan critical #yoda critical #pt jedi critical #I wouldn’t say that obi wan and Yoda never pay for their sins #they do #the problem is the Kenobists and JAs make them out to be these heroes they never really were #and now Disney is catering to them #anti disney star wars

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meta-shadowsong · 4 years ago

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Re: the Rako Hardeen Arc

So, every so often, this conversation crosses my dash/etc. And I tend not to get involved, because it’s very Discoursey and I’m not super into Discoursey stuff, lol.

But I’ve noticed a sort of...trend?

And that’s that there are basically two points of view on this arc:

What Obi-Wan did was Incredibly Hurtful and Anakin* is righteously pissed at him for faking his death/lying/using Anakin’s intense feelings in order to sell his cover.

What Obi-Wan did was Absolutely Necessary for the sake of the Republic/Mission and Anakin* is wrong for being upset with him over it/this is a symptom of his descent into darkness.

*I’m saying Anakin here because LBR the amount of meta/fic/etc. that deals with the perspective of anyone other than Anakin and Obi-Wan is...Lacking.

Anyway, I have issues with both of these takes--at least in these forms. Because they are treated as mutually exclusive and...they’re not??? As much as both of them are kind of wrong--both of them are also kind of right.

Let me be clear from the outset--it is not my goal here to take sides, or evaluate which of the two extremes is more or less correct. I’m going to talk about what, in my opinion, is wrong with each of them, and what’s right with each of them.

So first, just sort of in general terms/to explain why I think there’s rightness and wrongness in both extremes: whenever someone has personal relationships with other people, especially when that person is put into a position of public trust, there is a balance that needs to be struck between duty to the person/people with whom they have a relationship and duty to the community as a whole. In this arc, as in a lot of stories, those two levels of responsibility come into conflict. Obi-Wan makes a choice that aligns almost entirely with his public/community duty, even if it causes a lapse in the personal duty/a potential breach in his personal relationships.

Again, I’m not here to talk about whether his decision was right or wrong. I’m here to talk about the way the impact of that decision is treated in fandom, and the fact it’s treated as a very black-and-white thing when it’s kind of not.

The problem with Option #1 is that it’s...it doesn’t acknowledge that this was mission-related, it was a duty thing, it was something that, for whatever background, whatever reservations he may or may not have had, Obi-Wan was the best person to complete the mission and he accepted this assignment. Based on all the information available to him/the Council at the time, this was a necessary action to save the Chancellor’s life, before they realized he was Evil. That point I made above about community/public duty is a factor here, and Obi-Wan’s choices here aligned with that.

Also, Option #1 tends to skew towards the point of view that ‘the Jedi Order and/or Obi-Wan and the choices they/he made with regard to Anakin are a Significant Factor in his Fall.’ Which is flawed. Look, there are exactly two people to blame for Anakin’s Fall--Palpatine (without whom I tend to think Anakin is the least likely of the PT trio to go Dark Side, but that’s a topic for a separate essay), and of course Anakin himself. Now, there’s a whole road-building metaphor essay I have about other contributing factors that may have made manipulation easier for Palpatine, but that...there’s a difference between being a contributing factor and being responsible. ...but, again, that’s a topic for a separate essay.

There’s also the fact that, on the rare occasions where fics do handle POV of anyone other than Obi-Wan or Anakin and they skew towards Option #1, they tend to lump everyone outside Obi-Wan and the Council in the same group, regardless of nuance or characterization? Meaning everyone is angry/hurt in the same way otherwise they’re painted as the same kind of cold/hurtful way as Obi-Wan/the Council in this take. That those are the only two possible reactions someone can have to the situation. And that’s not right, either. Like...Anakin handles everything one way; Satine would probably be furious, at least in the short term; but looking at Ahsoka (who I’ll discuss more when looking at Option #2 because I think she in particular gets shafted by this Discourse) or Padme or Rex or Cody or...see what I mean?

Basically, Option #1 takes a kind of bad-faith/uncharitable view of Obi-Wan and the Jedi Council, in a way that I think is both unfair and wrong.

The problem with Option #2 is that it...it comes really close to saying that the feelings/reactions of people who are hurt by Obi-Wan’s actions are invalid. That the fact that the people close to him (Anakin in particular, as I mentioned above; but also Ahsoka, who I’ll talk a little more about in a minute; Satine, who is openly sobbing at his funeral; Padme...) should just Be Okay With This, without needing time to process the grief and the shock and the confusion and the hurt feelings over the fact that someone close to them, however justifiably, let them believe he was dead.

This is especially true for Ahsoka, who went through something that Obi-Wan knows first-hand is incredibly painful and takes some time to deal with--having a mentor/father-figure who she loves very much die in her arms. (Like I said. It saddens me that there’s very little content about anyone other than Obi-Wan and Anakin in the aftermath of this arc, because holy cow is there a lot to unpack in those other relationships, too).

And, I mean--I think eventually, all of the principal characters who are immediately impacted by this event would come around. In part because canon supports that--this incident never really comes up again. There’s no evidence of lingering hard feelings even from Anakin past the immediate aftermath/conclusion of the arc itself. To be fair, some of that is the pacing of the show/the structure of it as a series of mini-arcs that sometimes but don’t always build on one another. But the idea that it’s Not Fair or Wrong for people close to Obi-Wan to be upset with him over this, to need time before forgiving him, to maybe need to be mad at him and not just vent in private...particularly given that everything happens over the course of...like...a week. Even for trained Jedi who are taught how to handle Big Feelings, that’s a lot of Big Feelings to process and it’s not easy or simple.

Basically, Option #2 takes a kind of unfortunate/uncomfortable view about how Obi-Wan should be Automatically forgiven for the fallout in his personal relationships, because it was necessary/justifiable.

In the end, like I said, I have issues with both of these arguments, and I think there’s elements of truth to both. Like I said, I think that Obi-Wan ultimately will be forgiven because the choice he made was not malicious or intended to hurt people. On the flipside, it did hurt people close to him, and they have a right to need space to be Upset with him before they forgive him. So I don’t really like either take--the side that demonizes Obi-Wan (and, by extension, the Jedi Order/Council) for his choices, or the side that goes so far in the other direction that it says Anakin is Wrong/has no right to be Upset about it.

And one interesting thing about this, at least for me, is that...I don’t think this is really debated in the same way in other fandoms where there’s a faked-death plot? Like, the example that comes to mind is Criminal Minds; where JJ helps Prentiss fake her death for a season or so for Reasons. This decision ultimately saved Prentiss’s life, among other things, but when it’s revealed and Prentiss comes back, Reid in particular is extremely Upset (primarily with JJ) over the lies, and to the best of my recollection, neither of them is really demonized over it? Either in-universe or in the fandom. And yet when it comes to this particular plotline in this particular fandom, there’s no room for both sides to be right.

So...yeah. I’m not sure I made my point very well--like I said, I try to stay on the fringes of Discourse like this because I don’t like getting into Arguments on the internet, but these are the thoughts on the subject I’m having at the moment.

#star wars #fandom #originally posted june 2020

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yenneferw · 7 years ago

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Anonymous requested: “Tony being a trans guy has been my headcanon for a long time and I would absolutely die if you would write about him supporting Peter…”

Anyway I’ve gotta say I love writing Peter, like idk if I’m doing it in character but I love this

Also I’m definitely down for doing more of this with Peter coming out and stuff if someone requests it, but I wanted to do this scene like the moment it popped in my head

ALSO brevity is NOT my forte and I loved this prompt so it’s long beware of that

The first time Peter saw Tony after he turned down his offer to live with the rest of the Avengers, he wasn’t expecting him at all. He hadn’t been doing anything dangerous—Peter had decided that the criminals were just too scared to act out in Queens after Spider-Man took down the bird guy with the fancy weapons—nor actually noteworthy in particular. Actually, as it happened, when there was a knock on the door to Peter and May’s apartment, he and Ned were in his room, supposed to be studying but instead talking about the next Star Wars movie. Actually debating. Ned said that Rey was Luke’s daughter, but Peter was emphatic about her being Obi-Wan’s granddaughter.

So not exactly when you would expect Tony Stark to show up at your door, whether you were Spider-Man or not.

“Peter!” Aunt May called from the other room. She didn’t sound normal—not alarmingly different, but more like the kind of different that you called to your nephew who happened to be Spider-Man and whose superhero mentor, Iron Man, had arrived at the house.

Peter looked to the door and then to Ned, standing up with a huff of breath. He had gotten comfortable, and had just started in with all of his best points about why Rey was and should have been a Kenobi. Ned stood up too, and when Peter looked at him questioningly, he said, “It’s cold and here and I left my jacket in your living room.” Peter shrugged and walked out of his room.

When May found out about his superhero abilities and identity, she had been justifiably angry about the major secret he had been keeping from her, and all the danger he had been putting himself in. She at first insisted he couldn’t do that anymore, and then it was really emotional because she started saying stuff like What if you had died, Peter? What if you get hurt? and then Peter felt terrible, but then he just panicked and called Tony, afraid that if it wasn’t one overbearing guardian taking away his suit, it was another.

Well, maybe they weren’t being overbearing in this situation, but still.

She had spent a good ten minutes yelling at Tony Stark—Tony Stark, but if there was anyone who was going to yell at him unabashedly and without apologizing when she had a point to make, it was Aunt May—and then the next ten minutes with Tony on speaker phone, pacing through the living room and throwing up her hands every time Tony tried to explain. In the end, she had pointed to the phone as if Mr. Stark could see and said, “I can’t do this tonight.”

They had talked again the next morning. There was some begrudging agreement between the two of them, but some of May’s animosity hadn’t faded entirely.

So he suddenly understood why she sounded strange when he saw Tony standing in the living room seeming a bit like May had chewed him out before calling Peter into the room.

Meanwhile, Ned’s jaw had reached the floor.

“Oh, hello,” Tony said casually as he strode over to the two of them. “You must be Ned.”

Ned’s eyes were wide as he looked back and forth between Peter and Tony, and Peter was glad that this at least wasn’t how his best friend was finding out that he knew Iron Man, because otherwise he might have fainted. He certainly seemed like he was going to when Peter first told him that he was in a “Stark internship.”

“You’re Tony Stark,” Ned said. “You’re Iron Man. Peter, Iron Man— Iron Man is in your apartment.”

Peter nodded and patted his friend’s shoulder. As much as he had seen of superheroes and Tony Stark in particular, it was still strange to see him standing on their floors, next to their couch, Aunt May’s arms crossed next to him and Ned next to him while in his presence. He guessed he had gotten used to being around Tony as Spider-Man, not Peter Parker.

“Yup, Iron Man is,” Tony said. “And I think Iron Man wants a moment with Peter.”

Ned nodded and Peter saw him looking at Aunt May with incredulity. Maybe for the first time, Ned was realizing that Peter wasn’t only a crime-fighting spider guy, but also someone who had met and fought alongside the Avengers. He wondered what he would do if Peter showed him some of the videos that he took while he was away on that mission.

Tony put a hand on Peter’s shoulder and started to lead him away from the living room. With Ned there, he had forgotten that Tony didn’t just show up at his house, so there was some kind of reason for him to be there. Peter’s mind bounced quickly back and forth between There’s another mission! and He’s taking my suit again, so he said, “What is it?” before they were even in the hallway. Tony just patted his shoulder and didn’t look down at him, which only made his heart race faster. “What does it have to do with?”

Tony peered into his bedroom to make sure that that was the room they were going in, and then the two of them went in. Peter shut the door behind them and looked at Tony expectantly, but he just looked vaguely uncomfortable and unsure of himself. And that didn’t lend itself to either of Peter’s theories, so now he was really confused.

“Mr. Stark, please,” Peter said, “you’re killing me. What is it?”

“I— Well, Tony. You can call me Tony, Peter.”

He hadn’t expected that, but it wasn’t the kind of thing that you flew across state to talk to someone about, so his heart was still beating high in his throat and down in his stomach. “Okay, Mr. Tony— er, Tony,” he said, feeling the words flounder in his mouth as anticipation skyrocketed through him.

“Okay.” Tony let out a breath and looked at Peter squarely. “I’ve been trying to do better by you than people did for me.”

Peter’s brow creased and his eyes veered off as he tried to understand what that meant. “Okay… I think you’ve been really nice.”

Really nice was a little bit of an understatement when he thought about all that Tony had done to help along his transition. When he first started helping them, it had been weird trying to explain to Aunt May why Tony was helping out without explaining to her that they were connected via the Avengers, but she had accepted that they were close from the internship and Tony was generous. It was pretty surprising for himself, actually, and he was fully aware of the fact that he was Spider-Man.

Tony just shrugged, though. “I was in the neighborhood and I thought it might be a good idea to talk a little bit more about why I took the suit,” he said. The moment it sunk in, Peter had to stop himself from groaning. All of that anticipation for a lecture? But he knew he was in the wrong, and probably deserved a lecture. And he was glad that Aunt May didn’t know about all the trouble he had been getting into then and how much he had disobeyed Tony, because he was sure that she wouldn’t like it a bit. A lecture from Tony was better than a lecture from May—if a bit more awkward.

Peter rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m really sorry about all that, Mr.— Tony,” he said.

Tony nodded. “I think I owe you a bit of an apology too,” he told him. “I thought… I thought keeping an eye out on you was enough. And I wasn’t communicating with you. If I was, you wouldn’t have barged in on the FBI. That’s on me.”

He could see that this was hard for Tony somehow, and he remembered something Tony said about his dad when Peter was on the ferry. He wondered for a moment, then, if Tony’s dad wasn’t exactly good. But then, what else could Peter take out of this except that Tony Stark considered him to be a son figure? And that was too— surreal.

“And you shouldn’t have been lying to me and taking out your tracker and deactivating your training wheels,” Tony reminded him, and he shrunk a little bit and rubbed the back of his neck more. “But I think we can move on from that.”

“Are you going to tell May?” Peter asked. “If you think we need to, I can tell her. I don’t think she’d—”

“She already suspected and she asked me about it,” Tony said, cutting him off. “And I think, since she knows now, telling Aunt May might need to start becoming more of a thing.” Tony sat down on his bed and looked up at Peter. “Come on, sit down. Let’s have a moment.”

He paused. “A moment?” he asked, but he stepped over to his bed and sat down as well. He looked up at Tony, and briefly he wondered how hard May was having to restrain Ned from bursting into the room to talk to Tony and ask him a million questions.

“Yeah, we’re going to have a moment,” Tony told him decisively. He let out a breath. “Pete, I want you to feel like you can talk to me and I’ll listen.”

Peter nodded. The situation was quickly going from anxious to just plain uncomfortable, and he wasn’t sure where Tony was trying to take this. But he hadn’t felt like anyone was listening to him, not when he went to the ferry. He had texted Happy a million times, and for a while he thought that maybe Happy just didn’t like texting, but the more that happened, the more he came to the conclusion that unless he was useful, they didn’t need him around. And if they were going to treat him like a child after he went to Germany to help in their stupid fight, he felt like he had to take matters into his own hands. It was nice hearing that Tony had been listening the whole time, but he had been wondering if he would show any indication of that in the future. He guessed this was proof that that was true, but it felt like a very serious conversation with adults, and he hated those.

“I’ve been afraid that I’m going to mess something up here,” Tony went on when Peter didn’t say anything. Maybe he expected Peter to say something sincere in return, but his mind was scouring for jokes to make to lighten the mood. “I want to give you the things you deserve, Pete, and I don’t want you to think I’m doing that out of obligation.”

“Well.” He was reeling for something to say, but nothing came to mind. “Thank you.”

“I want you to feel like you can talk to me,” Tony said, and it seemed like this was the hardest part of his speech because he relaxed a little bit once he said it. Peter looked at him blankly, unsure what he meant. “About more than just all this.” He gestured to where Peter’s Spider-Man suit was sitting slung over the back of his desk chair.

More than just superheroes? He couldn’t imagine talking to Tony about things like what he got on his math test and what he wanted to do when he got older. Those were the conversations he had with May, but he guessed that that was the point.

“You mean… you want me to… No, I don’t understand,” Peter said, shaking his head.

“I don’t either, kid,” Tony said. He sounded so much like Uncle Ben for a second that Peter felt his chest feel tight with that pain. “I just want you to feel like you can talk to me.”

“Why?” was the first thing out of Peter’s mouth, and he didn’t really have time to think about how that might have been rude, because he was already launching into more. “What do I— I tell you about all my missions, I don’t understand. Are you— I mean I think it’d be a waste of your time if I just… ‘Hey, Tony, I got an A on my Spanish quiz today, have fun being Iron Man.’”

“No, I don’t think it’d be a waste of my time,” Tony told him. Peter was at a loss for words. “You��re a good kid, Peter. I care about you. I want to know about how you are, I want to know if anyone’s a dick at school, I want to know how your hormones—”

Peter stopped him by shaking his head. “Mr. Stark, I don’t— I get enough ‘your body is changing’ from May, and I don’t think you’d get it—”

“I think I’d get it a lot better than May would,” Tony told him.

“Well, I guess so, you’re a guy, but—”

“Pete, I’m trans too,” Tony told him, with a little smile on his face like he hadn’t expected Peter not to know that. “You didn’t know?”

All of his life he had looked up to Iron Man, all of his life he had played with toy Iron Man masks, all his life he had watched as Tony Stark told the world he was Iron Man and fought all the bad guys and exuded everything that Peter wanted to be one day—and it turned out that he was trans too. All his life, when he was struggling with his gender, when the “Penis Parker” chants stung, his favorite superhero was trans too. He didn’t know what to say. It seemed like this conversation was doing that to him a lot.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Tony said. He put an arm around Peter’s shoulders and patted his back. “I get it. And I wanna be there for you.”

Holy shit.

He remembered thinking that Tony was going in for a hug in the car, the “We’re not there yet.” It had been awkward thinking of it every time it came to his mind since then. But right then he just felt like they were there, so he leaned over and hugged his hero. “Thanks, Tony,” he said.

Tony hesitated, but no more than a second before he was hugging Peter back. “Hey, no problem, kid.” He pulled away from the hug and looked down at him. Peter felt so much admiration for his favorite superhero, but it didn’t feel like the normal way any kid admired Iron Man. It was that his favorite superhero was Tony. “Now, uh, I think your aunt wants to talk to you about the ferry business.”

Peter groaned. “Well, I think Ned wants to ask you a million questions.”

Tony grinned. “I don’t think we’re there yet,” he said, standing up. “But maybe next time.”

Peter stood up as well and went over to the door, shaking his head. “Oh, no. If I have to get lectured, you have to answer all of Ned’s questions,” he told him.

“I guess that’s fair,” Tony said, laughing. He patted Peter’s back again as they left the room.

Later, Peter would change “Mr. Stark” in his phone to “Tony,” and he wasn’t about to tell him just yet about his homework and his tests and his life to that extent, but it was enough.

#trans peter parker #my writing #mine #trans tony stark #sm:hc #sm:h #smhc #smh #this was fun to write #i'm bad at last lines and i couldn't figure out how to end it tho #let me know if you liked it if you want tho #smhc spoilers

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shadowsong26fic · 7 years ago

Text

Oh look it’s that time again

Time for another Random AU Outline(tm)!

I thought about doing an addition to the Valdemar Cossover AU this month (because I have mostly worked out wtf is going on with Dooku), buuuuut since Distaff is still super late (friggin Opera House, I swear--I think I’ve fiiiiiiiinally got it working? Fingers crossed, I’m so sorry, I refer you again to the teaser bits with my sincere apologies...), I decided to write up a variant plotline for that fic because yes in fact I do write AUs for my AUs shut up.

So this one is #1a. on my List of Things I’ll Never Actually Write. So, uh, content warnings for discussion of abortion and miscarriage, just as a heads-up.

(See also the Rabbit Hole AU; the Bail Unfucks the Timeline AU)

(Also, these things have an official tag now, #au outlines for the win)

All right, this diverges when, unlike in the actual storyline, Palpatine decides that the best way to deal with this whole...Situation...is to poison Anakin and induce a miscarriage.

He decides against this in the actual fic mostly because he thinks it’d risk more than it gained him. Speeding up his timeline is a more efficient solution.

I figure in this variant, he decides that he can definitely work with her rage at the universe over what happened, since she seems to want this kid, and it nips several potential future problems in the bud. And he discounts the ability of the Temple/Jedi to figure out what’s going on/help her through it/whatever.

This is a mistake.

So, Anakin goes to meet with the Chancellor, as she does.

This may even be that one meeting where he tells her ‘guess what you’re on the Council now’

And she’s like “...well, fuck, WHY DIDN’T YOU DO THIS SIX MONTHS AGO WHEN IT WOULDN’T RUIN EVERYTHING.”

And he’s wearing one of his ridiculous needle ring things, and puts a hand on her shoulder and triggers it.

I feel like he has like twelve of these.

To coordinate with all the ridiculous Opulent Chancellor Robes he has to wear.

Just in case he feels the need to poison someone on short notice.

Having his ring not match would give the game away, you know?

It’s all about the details.

Anakin does get a Warning Tingle or whatever, but she puts it down to EVERYTHING ELSE that happens in that meeting.

Except then she leaves, and she’s flailing. And she still decides to go down to find a race and clear her head, and she’s still ignoring Obi-Wan’s calls (Padme hasn’t called her yet).

And then she starts feeling sick. Like--really, genuinely, awfully sick.

So she pulls over.

And you know it’s bad if she thinks she isn’t really safe to drive.

Obi-Wan calls again and this time she picks up because SOMETHING IS WRONG and she hasn’t yet spiraled to the point where she feels like she can’t talk to him.

She’s just been, you know, working up the courage to tell him.

LOOK PADME I’M GETTING THERE DON’T RUSH ME

And then she notices the blood.

At this point, she’s REALLY freaking out and she starts babbling about ‘something is wrong with the baby’

Obi-Wan, internally: ...baby? What--

Obi-Wan, externally: I’m on my way, try to stay calm.

He gets down to where she is, and of course promptly takes her back to the Temple for medical attention.

And there’s a moment where she resists because “nooooo they’ll take her please don’t let them”

And he would reassure her on the subject because, no, that’s not how it works, you know that, Anakin.

Except she passes out at that point.

They get back to the Temple, and he says he thinks she’s pregnant and something is wrong with the baby.

(He hasn’t quite wrapped his head around this whole “she’s pregnant” part but one thing at a time)

And, of course, Master Che and the others figure out what’s going on.

At least that she’s been poisoned.

Master Che: ...she does realize, she could have come to us? There are safer ways.

Obi-Wan: Given what she was saying before she passed out, I don’t think she did this to herself. She does not want to lose this child.

Master Che: ........

Anakin + babies are stabilized.

(Because the Force is really invested in the twins, guys. Of course mother and babies are okay.)

Babies are also identified as twins.

Ani regains consciousness, and the first thing she asks is is the baby okay.

Because, yeah, the Order is going to take her away, but they can’t do that until the baby’s actually born and Anakin has a few months to figure out how to fix that the important thing right now is IS SHE OKAY DID I LOSE HER.

And she’s told, yes, baby is okay. Babies are okay.

Anakin: O.O

And then she shakes off the “wtf plural” moment and gets all bristly and defensive (as she does) about “i’m keeping them you can’t take them away from me i won’t let you.”

Master Che: uh...well, yes, that is your decision? You would have to leave the Order if you wanted to raise them yourself, of course, but--

Anakin: wait what.

Master Che: ...what exactly did you think would happen if you told us?

Anakin: ...that you’d take her away.

Master Che: ................no. Well, like I said, you wouldn’t be able to retain custody and stay in the Order, but that doesn’t mean we’d take your child without your consent.

Anakin: ....oh.... ::starts crying because OMG RELIEVED::

(There’s a whole other bit that I couldn’t fit in where Anakin mentions that “also the war is the only thing I’m really good at and we’re spread super thin and you’d take me out of the field.”)

(Which, honestly, is about 75% of why she hadn’t told Obi-Wan before the nightmares start. That, and Padme has to know first)

After that comes the super uncomfortable “guess what you were poisoned” conversation.

Especially since the drug Palpatine gave her, while it would make her miserable for a day or two and would terminate the pregnancy, wouldn’t have killed her.

So, then the question becomes--is there something going on that someone specifically wants Anakin sidelined for a few days?

This seems unlikely.

Or did someone specifically want to poison her because pregnancy?

Anakin: But that’s ridiculous. The only person I’ve told is Pa---Senator Amidala. Because. Um. I couldn’t tell anyone in the Order and she’s a woman and my uh friend and...

(Master Che accepts this. Because she hasn’t seen these two dorks interact. No one else would buy it.)

So they start the process of going over everywhere Anakin’s been in the last twenty-four hours, trying to figure out who might have poisoned her.

Anakin: ::develops a Horrible Suspicion::

Anakin: ....no, it’s a coincidence.

Anakin: the Chancellor is my friend.

Anakin: besides how would he know?

Anakin: why am I not finding any of this convincing.

MEANWHILE

Obi-Wan is trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

And, by a logical process similar to the one Palpatine used, in reverse, decides that the Chancellor is the one who got Anakin pregnant.

And he knows that Anakin went to see him just before she collapsed.

He doesn’t really suspect the Actual Truth. He doesn’t have enough of the picture yet.

But he does know that Palpatine is a power-grabby Politician who probably doesn’t want to deal with a sex scandal about how he debauched a celibate war nun.

Especially one who’s like a third his age.

(Side note: there’s another potential variant where Anakin’s pregnancy becomes public and all of Sidious’ schemes unravel because someone starts to question “hey why is the Chancellor spending so much time alone with a young female celibate military official/priest, enough that he’s been credibly accused of siring her child?” And then Some Intrepid Reporter keeps digging deeper and deeper and OH SHIT)

Anyway, the more Obi-Wan thinks about it, the more sense it makes.

Now, he just needs to prove it, and that will solve several problems at once.

(Also, then he’d be justified in punching Palpatine right in his smug face which seems a REALLY ATTRACTIVE notion right at this moment.)

MEANWHILE MEANWHILE

Anakin is not answering Padme’s calls.

Padme is Very Concerned about this, because Anakin was supposed to be here a while ago for the checkup and it took a hell of a lot of effort to talk her into it.

Finally, out of desperation, she calls Obi-Wan.

Because yes, this might explode their secret and really Ani should be the one to tell him but...

Obi-Wan is pulled out of his ‘how to get away with punching Palpatine right in his smug face’ plotting and answers.

He tells her that Anakin is ill, that she collapsed, and is with the Healers now, but has been stabilized and will be all right.

And then they both sort of dance around the ‘baby’ question for a while.

Because Padme doesn’t want to spill all of Anakin’s secrets, and Obi-Wan isn’t sure that Padme knows, and doesn’t want to complicate/damage this relationship for Anakin, especially since she’s almost certainly going to end up leaving the Order and she’ll need someone to go to and...

(He adds “figure out what I’m going to do at that point” to his to-do list.)

(Look, there’s a decent chance that even the main version of Distaff will turn into Obianidala eventually, depending on a couple different factors. This variant? Almost certainly would.)

Finally, Padme can’t take it anymore and just blurts it out, “what about the baby, is he okay?”

And Obi-Wan has reached a point where he’s going, “you know what? FUCK IT.” And he tells her--yes, the baby is okay, also there are two of them, also Master Che says Anakin was poisoned and that’s why she collapsed and nearly miscarried, also I’m almost entirely certain that Chancellor Palpatine was involved but I have no proof.

And Padme? Padme sees red.

“So,” she says, “let’s find some.”

Because Padme is already starting to see through Palpatine’s mask.

And now he’s coming after her wife and children.

Obi-Wan, as it turns out, responds much better to “meet me at the docks at midnight and bring a gun” than Bail did.

So, back in the Temple, Anakin has managed to extract herself from the conversation with Master Che, mostly by cooperating for once/playing on the fact that she’s sick to be left alone.

AS SOON AS she can, she unhooks all the monitors and her IV and sneaks out.

She manages not to faint or throw up. She’s very proud of herself for that.

She just wants some answers, really. Part of her still can’t accept what Palpatine probably did, but maybe he noticed something strange about her when she visited? She didn’t start to feel sick until leaving his office, but...

She runs into Obi-Wan and Padme, who are also on their way to break into Palps’s office to get some answers.

Padme: Ani! ::goes to hold her close because fuck it she could have died our children could have died and it’s only Obi-Wan here to see and I don’t think he cares anymore::

Anakin: ::clings back, looks from her to Obi-Wan and back:: What are you doing here...?

Obi-Wan: What are you doing out of bed?

And then there is Banter for a moment until Padme says, “uh, guys? Mission? Trying to track down/prove who was behind the whole poison thing?”

Except then they have to argue whether or not Anakin should really be there, which Obi-Wan and Padme win mostly by a) teaming up on her and b) darling you are clearly using the wall to stay upright go wait in my office.

Obi-Wan and Padme break into Palps’s office together.

He’s not there--he’s left for the day, or something. Especially it’s probably very late at night by now.

Now, of course he’s not stupid enough to keep Incriminating Evidence lying around. So they don’t find anything like...a discarded poison vial in the trash, let alone the ring.

They do find--something. I’m not sure what. Possibly the Emperor’s Darth Sidious’ Private Holo Setting(tm).

(Thank you, Timothy Zahn, I love that joke)

And then Palpatine comes back.

Because he sensed someone breaking into his office.

Or he has a mundane alarm system set up and they tripped it.

Obi-Wan gets between Padme and Palpatine and draws his lightsaber.

Off in Padme’s office, Anakin’s Spidey Sense is tingling.

She runs after the others, and walks in on the Confrontation scene.

Now, there are some things that even Anakin can’t ignore. Not at this point in her timeline.

Palpatine might have a split second to realize just how thoroughly He Done Fucked Up before two lightsabers and a half-dozen blaster bolts punch him in the face.

So, Our Heroes are now in the Supreme Chancellor’s office, which they broke into, standing over his Very Dead Body.

They stare at each other for a minute. “...did that really just happen?”

And then Anakin actually does faint again, breaking the moment.

Obi-Wan: ::catches her:: we need to get out of here.

Padme: we can’t run away, we have to deal with the fallout.

Obi-Wan: well yes but we should probably not be caught at the actual scene of the crime?

Padme: ...good point.

From there--IDK, there’d be a long investigation but the proof would probably come through pretty quick once Palps is no longer actively protecting it.

Obi-Wan probably still goes to kill Grievous, since something in Palpatine’s files says he’s on Utapau.

Master Che straight-up ties Anakin to the bed to make sure she doesn’t follow.

Bail gets dragged into this mess to help Padme deal with the political fallout.

He probably ends up Chancellor, or possibly Mon Mothma does--the scandal surrounding Padme and the Jedi and the whole, y’know, Justifiable Regicide bit is a little too much to put her there.

There’s probably a lot of Discussion in the Order about everything that went down. Probably, once the war is Officially over, Anakin and Obi-Wan both leave.

And then there will be More Discussion once the twins are around Padawan age. But that is beyond the scope of this outline.

Basically, everything ends happily because, unlike in canon where Palps is p. much the only one on the ball, He Done Fucked Up.

#shadowsong26fic #shadowsong writes star wars #things shadowsong will never actually write #distaff #au outlines for the win

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alistaircousland · 8 years ago

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I'm curious? How exactly do you see reylo becoming canon when he tortured her and killed his own father? There isn't even subtext so I'm confused by all the "canon sources" you seem to be reading

(before anything- Reylo is not canon yet. I strongly believe it will be. If you refer to me saying so in my blog title etc. that is mostly to scare off harassing antis so they do not follow me. I’m not talking about normal people who don’t ship reylo following me, here I’m refering to the death threat senders and those who throw all sorts of slurs at reylo shipppers. I do not want them on my blog.)

I’ve thought a lot about how I should answer you on this anon. Short or long? Precise or jokingly? I’ve come to the conclusion that if you really want to know, what you should get back is a (at least almost) definite answer. I will spend a lot of time on Kylo/Ben, since that seems to be the man some people have problems with, not just with the ship Reylo but with his character as a whole.

I’d also like to state right now, before you bring in every piece of logic you’d usually apply to any real-world situation. There are two things we need to be clear about: this is fiction. This is a fictional ship. This whole story is a made up thing, by bringing in every moral and standard you have normally nothing in Star Wars makes no sense. Secondly, no character is perfect. Not a single one. Kylo has his flaws, Rey has her flaws, even our darling Finn does. The original trio has em and there’s so much to pick from in the prequels. I won’t go into that any more, but you need to have this clear. No, Kylo is in no way a perfect prince and no he will not be treated as such. Got it? Ok let’s go!

Let’s start with Kylo Ren, previously known as Ben Solo!

Now, just to give a quick reminder, he is not irredeemable. He feels compassion. He is not okay with the First Order blowing up planets (read the canon novel fam). He most likely grew up on one of those planets destroyed. He is not a psychopath.

So now let’s get to the Han death scene, shall we? I don’t know how people think he initially wanted to kill Han, or that it was his plan all along to trick him into some false sense of security or something? There are a LOT of ways you can interpret this scene, and to try to not make this too long I won’t go into every detail. If you could not see that he was truly torn apart and did not know what to do I really am confused by how you watched this movie. He is distraught, wanting to go back but knowing he never could. Yes, he believes that he never could go back with Han, because of all the awful things he has done (see “It’s too late”). It doesn’t matter if Han says no (and sometimes I wonder if Han really believed his own words, see this theory on this scene if you’re interested: http://nathantrents.tumblr.com/post/159970936626/ ), he has already made up his mind about that fact. His only choice in this scene as far as we can see according to him is to kill himself or kill Han. He can’t go back to Snoke without killing Han, he can’t go back to Han because of his actions. I’m sure he does not want to die, and makes that terrible decision to kill Han. Hopefully that will help him stay on the dark path, he believes. Listen; he is not okay with what he did. That’s the whole point of the scene and his death. Even though he did the darkest of acts- killing his own father,- he still can’t get rid of the light still inside him. Still, when he was stabbed by his son, Han caresses his face, as to say he still believes in him, or still cares for him. It’s not far fetched to think that Kylo didn’t believe that he cared- he was not there for him during his childhood and sent him away to train with Luke! Still though, he can’t justify it himself which is what makes him redeemable to me. (Another interesting theory regarding his struggle with the light is that Snoke actually encourages him to use BOTH light and dark, but somehow Kylo only wants to be dark? I don’t know what to make of that yet, but it is still interesting to note.)

I hate to say this, because I do truly love Han Solo, but Kylo killing him is not inexcusable. I’ve gone through it before, you know. When Darth Vader killed Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan is one of, if not my number one favorite character in Star Wars. Still, I got through it, and while I was pissed at Vader I still accepted his redemption. He killed Palpatine, the worst of the worst. I don’t know how y’all can’t see that this is setting itself up to be done again, with Kylo killing Snoke in most likely episode IX. Snoke is no better than Palpatine, they both are despicable beings (who has shown no indication of remorse/compassion whatsoever) and they’re both going to be slain by our legendary Skywalker line, whom they thought they had seduced well enough to have on their side just to have them both eventually turn on them. Kylo is already showing a lack of faith in Snoke. Honestly, he might’ve even killed his father to finally have access to his physical form, as we still don’t know if he actually has even met him face to face! Imagine that! Besides, Kylo hates the weapon. He does not want to use it. He never wanted to kill his father. This is going into too much theorizing but what did Vader want to do? He keeps saying “I’ll finish what you started”. I can only think of Vader destroying the Jedi (which must be why he wants to locate Luke- so he can end the Jedi). HMMMMM I wonder who else says they want the Jedi to end??????????? *cough*it’s Luke*cough* What if it was Luke who first betrayed Ben back in the day? Anyway that’s enough for now.

A quick stop with some Rey too!

I’d like to talk about the interrogation scene with Rey here. No, this is not a “classic”torture scene. Really, it is not. Please compare this scene with what the First Order did to Poe earlier in the film. That is torture. Kylo has stated in the novel that he does not want to hurt her. Yes, he does say that! Guess what he says! ”Despite what you may believe, it gives men no pleasure. I will go as easily as possible- but I will take what I need.” Guess what! This is exactly what he does! He tries to use the mind probe force ability to get his crucial piece of information painlessly out of her. Unfortunately, he fails to do so. Rey instead uses this same dark side ability to do the same to him, revealing his darkest fears to him. There are multiple times Rey struggled with the dark side in this film alone, this scene and during the fight in the forest. In the end of the fight she even considers killing him, a dark side of the force thing to do (remember “it’s not the jedi way!!!11!!1” – Anakin).

Aaaanyway- her “hurting from the probe” is also very much up to interpretation too. In the novel there is no mention of her feeling pain from it(probably because Kylo says he will do this as painlessly as he can), but she’s stressing because she’s trying to stop it and that’s why she is so distressed. Listen it is not okay that he kidnapped her and caused her this stress, but you do realize that she is is enemy? And still- even though he could treat her the worst possible way he did not. Of COURSE Rey is in distress being captured by him, and that is not okay but what did you expect? What I’m saying is that technically he should treat her worse, but my point here is that he still didn’t. He is supposed to be the big baddie! Which is why it makes it so special that he does not harm her.

Another highly important fact to consider; she always shoots first. When they meet in the forest for the first time, she fires at him, unbeknownst to who he his. He comments on this (novel), saying “You would kill me. Knowing nothing about me.” She says he is of the First Order so why wouldn’t she, and he replies with that she doesn’t and that she is ignorant. He continues with “So afraid. Yet I should be the one who should be scared. You shot first. You speak of the First Order as if it were barbaric, And yet, it is I who was forced to defend myself against you.” This of course happens once again in the forest with her firing her blaster at him first. He is forced to knock her out so she wouldn’t try to harm him further, because yes, she would. This we see when she gets the lightsaber, and she charges at him. He is defending himself, still stunned about how good she is at literally everything. She is the one who slices him up, cutting his face, are two seconds away from killing him. She didn’t have a scratch from what we saw.

So to the good stuff- reylo. Why? How?

Listen- we don’t want a toxic-capture-prisoner-slave-rape thing that somehow people seem to believe. The most of us want them to be together on the same side, be that the dark side, light side or the most popular and mostly loved outcome- in the middle, together. Since I believe the route they’re going is the middle ground, I’m going to focus on this one ok? Save dark Reylo for the fanfiction.

OKAY SO if you ship Reylo then you most likely believe that they formed a force bond when they entered each others minds(or when he first entered hers in the forest, but that is up to interpretation), which honestly seems like the only logical way for her to be that knowledgeable of the force after their encounter. She succeeds in doing the mind-probe back at him, in addition to using a Jedi mind trick on the (James Bond) stormtrooper aaand getting that lightsaber in the forest without ANY training. If they formed a force bond, this would actually make sense as the core of a force bond is borrowing each other’s strength. She could have picked up how to do all these things through him.

Before this bond was made Kylo mentions this “something” at least three times in the novel talking about her. Rey also thinks that she finds herself drawn to Kylo when they meet again in the forest, which all would make sense if they formed a force bond. Kylo’s pre-force bond “somethings” could be him sensing there is a possibility of that bond, which would make sense with him saying “something there. Something unexpected.”

For Star Wars this is an unexplored story- a light side-dark side romance. This has been explored in the now expanded universe, but not in what we consider canon. Imagine all the possibilities! The novel Lost Stars (yup a canon novel) they have explored the Empire-Rebel romance thing, and that is such an amazing story you definitely should read. For the movies this is a new thing that is just screaming to happen. Even marketing is pushing these two as the main characters of this saga- further establishing how their relationship is at the core of this trilogy. Rey said she feels like their destinies are intertwined, and guess what TLJ will definitely further develop that.

While I would adore it if they went romantic with it, they don’t have to. This story can work with them just relying on their force bond connection to so become friendly towards each other. However, adding a romantic factor would really spice it up and make it a lot more interesting.

(If you are a fan of the “cutesy” way of shipping them then you must’ve seen the way he looked at her when she catched the lightsaber. Literal heart eyes. He is so attracted to her, be that romantic of because of the force bond- so much so that he wants to teach her and never harm her.)

Anyway- I have no idea how or how much you know about Reylo, but you should know we predicted balance being the main plot for this saga back in 2015/16 right after release. All that by reading the subtext of the film, novel and script notes. We picked up this ship also, as being the main indicator of this balance. We knew that their bond would be the center piece, which is why it does make sense to ship them. They’re yin and yang- different, and yet the same. Lonely, isolated in their own way. We want them to find happiness in each other.

The reason I’m not saying anything about the Finn and Rey ship here is because I have nothing against it. I love them, they’re adorable. Personally though I want and strongly believe Reylo will be the way this is going, and then I can only hope they’re brave enough to go with Finn and Poe. If not, there were rumors about a “Finn-love-interest” being cast for ep VIII far back and now we have Rose- so tbh I would not be surprised if they put them together either.

SO THE BOTTOM LINE IS-

I am not forcing you to ship this. You are allowed to like and not like whatever you want to. What I am tired of is having to justify my ship because others don’t bother to read subtext, because the film, the promotional material for TLJ and everything Rian says about it all but confirms it for me. What I am asking of you is to ship and let ship. Stop hating on such a small, insignificant thing because yes it is insignificant for you if you don’t care about it, but stop harassing shippers for what they enjoy. I have no idea if you’ve participated in any of this, I hope you have decency enough to not have done it anyway, but that needed to be said.

As a last note to this, it needs to be said that Star Wars has never been a fluffy, cutesy non-problematic series. There are sooo many morally wrong decisions being made by all characters, so cherry picking which are good “cinnamon rolls” and who is not is not the way to go when you discuss this saga seriously (note: when discussing seriously. by all means make whatever memes suits you for the fun of it fun). This saga is so much deeper than that. The conflict between light and dark has always been at its core, and as we know nothing is ever black and white about this. I am so glad they’re finally solidifying the balance between the to to be focal point.

Thanks for not sending hate and actually asking for a serious opinion, I hope this answered your question in some way. If not, well, go back on anon and specify whatever you feel wasn’t properly said I guess. So yeah, thanks for not going all about this in a hateful way.

#ask #reylo

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padawanlost · 7 years ago

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I’ve been rewatching the Clone Wars, an I was wondering if you have anything to say about the Onderon War? Do you think it was the the first stage of the rebellion or more like just part of the clone war? Do you have anything to say on Saw’s crazy tactics? Or the Ahsoka-Lux-Steela love triangle?

I haven’t watched that arc recentlyso I’m might be a little fuzzy on the details but like most TCW episodes it hasits good and bad moments.

The first thing that got my attentionwas how Lux and Saw contacted the Jedi Order. In the movies we only saw theJedi Council accepting assignments that came straight from the Senate. The ideathat anyone can contact and ask for help is great (it’s how the Order shouldwork) but, if you think about it, it disproves some fans argument that the Jedihad no real agency. The Jedi Council having the power to decide if they shouldget involved in a cause or not is evidence that they had the power to get involvedmore often in other situations (slavery!) but chose not to. If they couldn’t tryabolish slavery because it was too political for them, why could they getinvolved in undermining a government (without any serious investigation tovalidate the claims it was illegitimate)? They can answer when the son of aformer senator asks for help but they can’t answer a simple question to a slave….okay:/

“That’s terrorism, Anakin”. Obi-wanis not wrong. They have no real proof they are on the “right side” of theconfront but the moment Anakin suggests this tactic could help them win the warthey all jump on board pretty quickly.

Anakin: Well, I think of it as an insurgency to help realign these planets with the Republic.Mace: We can divide the Separatist forces and press them on two fronts.Yoda: A means to an end fear cannot be. Stop those who spread terror the Jedi must.Obi-wan Indeed. What you’re suggesting would open up dangerous possibilities. And we must not train terrorists.Anakin: Eh, rebels.Obi-wan: How we conduct war is what distinguishes us from others. Funding rebels to overthrow a legitimate government puts innocent lives at risk.Anakin: We can minimize collateral damage by using arms that mainly affect droids.Mace: The least we can do is help them defend themselves, test the tactic while we’re at it.Anakin: This could be a great new weapon for us.

All pretense is throw out thewindow when Obi-wan opens says “

Funding rebels to overthrow a legitimate government putsinnocent lives at risk”.

Emphasis on LEGITIMATE government. They have no proof whatsoeverthe government but they involved into this “insurgency” because it might maketheir jobs easier. An experiment with people lives, because even if they don’tuse live ammunition, they droids definitely will.

Later we learn the government is illegitimate,but that doesn’t justify the Council’s earlier decisions. what if the governmenthad been legitimate? What if all those who died or were traumatized/injured bythe events were so because of a trigger happy Jedi Order. I mean, it happenedbefore. the Jedi were tricked into slaughtering innocents because they didn’tbother investigating the situation before acting. They blindly followed the requestof an upstanding (influential) citizen and it ended up in disaster.

Personally, I don’t consider theseevents the beginning of the rebellion because they had nothing to do with it(intentionally). The rebellion was born out of a group of wealthy and powerfulbeing who wanted the return of the status quo that allowed them to remained wealthyand powerful for generations. I think the trained the “rebels” got and whatthey faced definitely help them fight against the Empire but I don’t see as anearlier stage of the Rebel Alliance. I see the events on Onderon more like ashowcase of the Jedi’s terrible military and political tactics than a series ofcalculated events with a planned outcome (the birth of the rebellion).

I know Saw comes back in Rebels but Ihaven’t watched that yet so no comments there and his cameo in Rogue One was tooweird to explain. What I can talk about was the Steela-Lux-Saw dynamic. I lovehow in the beginning it was implied that either Lux or Saw were going to raiseup to the occasion and become the leader but in the end it’s Steela that becomesthe real leader. Of course, they later ruined it by killing the fierce, independentand intelligent black girl :/

I also know a lot of fans hate the Ahsoka-Lux-Steelatriangle but it never bothered me that much. It makes sense for a teenager tofeel attracted to other, and considering Ahsoka’s life is not like she a lot ofnon-Jedi her own age to experiment with. It could’ve been better executed, ofcourse, but I don’t think it “ruined Ahsoka” like some fans claim it did.

I think this arc biggest flaw was inhow much potential it wasted. It could’ve gone deeper into the Jedi shadypolitics and war efforts. It could have focused on Ahsoka’s feelings andlearning how to deal with feelings/desires with tem the Jedi Order. And it definitelyshould have kept Steela alive.

#ask #anon #the clone wars #jedi order #onderon #steela gerrera #saw gerrera #lux bonteri #ahsoka tano #sw meta #padawanlost #tcw meta #gffa politics #meta: steela #meta: ahsoka #meta: saw #txt

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jediaretheworst · 8 years ago

Text

“Chosen One” Pt 3

This was originally an essay I wrote as a freshman in college, so it’s a... little rough. I’ll add my sources again at the bottom just because force of habit will make me anxious if I don’t..... this is technically an “academic” paper I wrote lol. This is long. @npd-starscream

The Jedi Order's belief that emotion can only distract from seeing the world as it truly is, and that it can only conflict the person who has them, was a direct source of their failures in the second Star Wars trilogy, episodes I-III. Ignoring emotion and the passions, or pretending like they don't exist to try and gain objectivity tends to be a philosophically contradictory practice. Emotion is required to make logical decisions, for survival, motivation, and can serve all three parts of Plato's divided soul.

The Jedi Code & "The Slave Metaphor"

"There is no emotion. There is peace. There is no ignorance. There is knowledge. There is no passion. There is serenity. There is no chaos. There is harmony. There is no death. There is the Force" (Simpson). The absence of emotion in the Jedi Code is meant to make those who follow it more rational, objective and fair. It is often times assumed that the lack of emotion equates itself to logical thinking, and this is generally accepted in society, even today, and is a common philosophical concept. "One of the most enduring metaphors of reason and emotion has been the metaphor of master and slave, with wisdom of reason firmly in control and the dangerous impulses of emotion safely suppressed..." (Solomon 3).

A Phantom Menace

A Phantom Menace, while sometimes considered inessential to the entire story arc of Star Wars, is a shining example of the illogical nature of the Jedi Code. The abandonment of emotion might be attainable for some forms of alien life in the Star Wars universe, but is it not only extremley harmful to human beings, it is also pretty much impossible. One immediate issue that arises in The Phantom Menace is not only that this is harmful to people, but that this is extremely harmful to children and would effect them for the rest of their lives.

A new study from UCLA suggests that a loving parental figure may alter neural circuits in children that could influence health throughout a lifespan. On the flip side, the negative impact of childhood abuse or lack of parental affection take a mental and physical toll can also last a lifetime. Childhood neglect increases adult risk for morbidity and mortality. (Bergeland)

This would effect every Jedi Padawan, although some of them turn out better than others. In The Phantom Menace, we are obviously not foreshadowing the failure of every single Padawan, and obviously some of them have made it through this process to become Jedi Knights and dismember droids and impose their holiness upon the rest of society, which is annoying but not at all the worst outcome that could've been a product of their childhood. Nor is the worst outcome when a Padawan walks away from the Jedi Order to wander the streets of Coruscant to impose their own sense of justice without any sort of governing body, like Ahsoka Tano (The Wrong Jedi).

No, obviously the worst possible outcome of these denials of attachment and emotional validation presents itself in the Star Wars universe is a tall, ugly, wheezing metal machine they call Darth Vader, who started out as one of these Padawans and grew up to me one hell of a emotionally stunted mass-murderer. It's not to say that he isn’t responsible for his actions, just as any murderer is, at least in part, responsible for what they have done. But the Jedi order claims to have the moral superiority, and condemn those who end up like Vader, but the reality is, even if Vader's action are truly his responsibility, and his responsibility alone, they could've been prevented by the Jedi order had they taught him to understand and accept his emotions.

Now of course, the Jedi sculpt themselves not for their own benefit, or for any other Jedi's benefit, but rather to see how they could best serve others who cannot themselves. Eudaimonia is a Greek term used by Aristotle to talk about the concept of "the good life". Which on the surface seems utterly converse to what the Jedi believe in, duty, service, lack of worldly belongings, etc. But to Aristotle, this concept of Eudaimonia isn’t just having things or simply being happy, rather the concept is meant to say that life is not fulfilled until you reach your full potential. If the Jedi wished to serve their galaxy to the best of their ability, then they would have to come to the understanding that alienating themselves and the younger, perhaps unwilling, members of their order from emotion and from others does not further their goal of servitude, because doing so would mean that they would not and could not serve their galaxy to the best of their ability.

Attack of the Clones

There is a really obvious metaphor in the Star Wars prequels about the modern western world and ancient Rome, and in the same parallel, there was a school of philosophy that existed in ancient Roman times called Stoicism. Stoicism can be explained simply as, "Stoics... hold that emotions like fear or envy... either were, or arose from, false judgements" (Baltzy). However the views of the Stoics oftentimes contradicted the environment and society they lived in, as Robert C. Solomon explains, "Stoics analyzed emotions as conceptual errors, conductive to misery... Emotions in a word, are judgements- judgements about the world and one's place in it. But the world of Roman society was not a happy or a particularly rational place," and goes on to note that Seneca, an influential Stoic who served emperor Nero, went on to commit suicide (5).

The Clone Wars

The Star War: The Clone Wars animated series provides a look at the missing pieces to Anakin Skywalker's fall to the dark side. There is one main plot event in the television series of particular relevance, that shows how his character is more prone and inherently drawn to the side of the dark, and showcases more information that provides insight to his final moments of weakness.

These events occur when Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, and Anakin become stranded on a strange planet home to beings that are extremely powerful in the force. These beings are essentially embodiments of the light, dark and balance (Overlords). There are three episodes that take place here and involve these characters, and the central plot revolves around how Anakin must take the place of the 'father' of the embodiments of light and dark, because only he can 'control' them. This view is similarly expressed by Obi-Wan in Revenge of the Sith when he says, "You were supposed to bring balance to the force, not destroy it" to an immolated Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin makes similar, and poor, decisions in these episodes as he does in Revenge of the Sith. Overlords, Altar of Mortis, and Ghosts of Mortis, he lives up to Obi-Wan's statement of "destroying" the force. Instead of keeping the literal embodiment of darkness from getting to the rest of the galaxy, he instead decides to help it after it shows him his future. It's interesting because he sees all the stupid mistakes he's going to make, and for some reason believes in this dark side entity that promises, in essence, the best way to avoid making those mistakes later in life is to just make them as soon as possible. It is important to note that Anakin is willing to sacrifice himself and what he believes in for this entities' promise of peace. This is another example of how denying the need for Eudaimonia when wanting to serve others becomes harmful. Anakin is not at peace because he can't handle his own emotions, and does not care if he destroys himself to achieve the Jedi goal of peace, and this, by consequence, convolutes this idea of peace, and turns into this sort of "the ends justify the means" belief.

At the end of these three episodes, Anakin says, "You will not understand what I have to do to end the clone war. You will try to stop me. I have seen that it is the Jedi who will stand in the way of peace" (Ghosts of Mortis). Even in the ugliest moments of Anakin Skywalker, he's talking about achieving peace, a goal set by Jedi, not Sith. But in the end of this, his memory is erased and he returns to being "light side" Anakin.

However, there is another important concept that can also be explained by the episode of Star Wars: The Clone wars, Overlords where Anakin balances the force and holds back both the light and the dark. Descartes (1596-1650) had a view on emotion that was "value-oriented" (Solomon 7), meaning that they had a particular role to play in aiding reason, and where the two would be in coordination. Descartes' provides this example of using courage to motivate,

To excite courage in oneself and remove fear, it is not sufficient to have the will to do so, but we must also apply ourselves to consider the reasons, the objects and examples which persuade us that the peril is not great; that there is always more security in defense than flight, that we should have the glory of joy of having vanquished, while we should expect nothing but regret and shame for having fled and so on. (Solomon 6)

In this example, emotion and reason are in lockstep. Neither hold a higher balance than the other, rather both are important to survival, and emotion is necessary in making a logical decision. It allows the decision maker to motivate themselves to do what is right, by emotion alone, as Hume would argue.

Revenge of the Sith

All the components that led to Anakin's fall finally break through to the surface in Revenge of the Sith (ROTS). The opening plot point to this movie, when then Chancellor Palpatine is "captured" by the separatists, shows the contradiction in the Jedi code and then the actual practice of the Jedi that Anakin had so obviously struggled with. This contradiction lies in the line of the Jedi Code that goes as follows, "There is no emotion, there is peace" (Simpson). This seems to make sense at first glance, but its' shortcomings in comparison to other beliefs held by the Jedi, are clearly demonstrated when Anakin kills Count Dooku. Emotion is not the opposite of peace. Anakin kills someone who is a great threat to the galaxy, and their universe would have hypothetically been more peaceful without Dooku. Emotion drives Anakin to act for peace, not lack of it. This confliction further warps his views as the movie progresses, and this is where the ideals of the Jedi truly fail him.

It was peace that truly drove Anakin, even for selfish reasons, up to this point in his life. But his story is a clear example of Hume's motivation theory, that reason itself cannot provide the will to take action. In Star Wars the Jedi code and their other ideals often parallel the Kantian idea of "duty", that is to do good for good's sake, or "A will estimable in itself and good without regard to any further end" (Kant 197). However, not conversely to this, Hume "came to question the role and capacities of reason itself, and in particular the power of reason to motivate even the most basic of moral behavior" (Solomon 7). Meaning, Hume wasn't directly disagreeing with the idea of doing good for good's sake, but rather what would motivate you to do so. Kant believed that this sense of "duty" was enough, but Hume believed that emotion was required to make someone act on this sense of "duty".

These arguments are played out at the end of ROTS when Anakin is provided with not only an idea of "peace", a dictatorship but also the will to do so, because he believes going down this path is the only way to save his wife. Anakin plays the part of Hume's argument, that there must be some incentive to want to take moral action, and he makes Hume look rather sinister. But Hume's argument doesn't have to end in fire, burning, and destroying a lot of things you care about, and nor would have Anakin needed to go that far to prove that point. Would he have made such a move for (what he believed was) peace had his wife's life not been threatened? Or conversely, on the side of Kant, would Obi-Wan been able to destroy his friend if not for his sense of "duty" to do so?

In the end, however it is emotion that is the downfall of not only Anakin Skywalker, but the entire Jedi order (by his hand), so it is easy to return to the "Slave Metaphor" and blame this on emotion running amok. But is also the original denial of emotion early on in Anakin's life that led to the insecurity and lack of control over them. So what is it then? Reason is greater than the passions? Or as Hume put it, "reason is, and always should be, the slave of the passions" (Solomon 1)?

Return of the Jedi & Plato

At the end of Anakin/Vader's story, he supposedly returns to the light. The idea that emotion is inferior to reason, especially when it comes to how they relate to making moral judgements, can be further discarded, by looking at why he returned to the light. He made this decision as he did all his decisions, emotionally. Seeing his son's loyalty to goodness and to the light is the final turning point where he seems to denounce the ways of the Emperor. But this doesn't make him a Jedi, and it's not a decision he made by the grace of reason.

How, then, would Plato describe such inconsistent moral judgements? "In book IV of the Republic, Plato's descriptions of psychological conflict include cases in which agents (people) perform acts contrary to what they take to be the best course open to them" (Lesses). However, it wouldn't be correct to assume that Anakin didn't think he did exactly what he had to do in ROTS. The blame for this isn't to be put on merely logical thinking, but rather on the fact that he was taught consistently that his emotions were worthless, and by extension himself. So destroying himself to help someone he loved would've seemed perfectly acceptable, and the correct course of action. Regardless of whether he thought he was being logical, however, Anakin did make an illogical decision.

In order to understand how agents can act contrary to reason, we must examine Plato's parts-of-the-soul doctrine. Plato distinguishes three parts of the soul in Book IV (of the Republic): (I) reason (II) spirit, and (III) appetite. Agents are susceptible to several, relatively independent sources of motivation because each part of the soul has a characteristic motivation. (Lesses 148)

This then, supports the "Slave Metaphor". But Plato treats the passions differently, because his definition of reason is different. According to Plato,

It (the sun) is the cause of knowledge and truth; and so, while you may think of it as an object of knowledge, you will do well to regard it as something beyond truth and knowledge and, precious as these both are, of still higher worth,… In our analogy of light and vision were to be thought like the sun, but not identical with it, so here both knowledge and truth are to be regarded like the good. (Fogelin 371)

This means that if someone is wise, they are closer to the light, that if they are closer to the light than they are closer to the "good" although those three things are not all the same. So here, making a logical decision would be the same as making a moral decision. Vader's sparing of his son and act against the emperor is an emotional decision, but it is a move towards the light, and therefore, by Plato's terms, also a move towards reason/wisdom. Most importantly, he would have not made this decision without the role of emotion.

The incorrectness of the light and dark binary in the Star Wars universe can be clearly seen here, and we can see how Anakin/Vader balances and is attuned to both. On one side, we have Plato's "light" and on the other side, we have emotion & what Plato calls appetite."Plato accepts the occurrence of weakness" (Lesses 148), and serving only the appetite would be seen as weakness. Plato did believe that reason should be above the appetite, but not for the same reasons as the Jedi. In fact, "Each part (of the soul)… involves different sorts of desire" (Lesses 148). The pull of the three parts of the soul, reason, spirit, and appetite, can explain the inconsistencies in Anakin's full story arch, and where the motivation to do good really came from. This binary of light and dark are not what the Jedi said they were, emotion can serve both the light and the dark, reason or appetite, destroy the Jedi or the Sith Emperor.

Closing Thoughts

The denial of the passions leads to an imbalance, because they play a role in each part of Plato's divided soul, in motivation, in reasoning for survival, and personal well-being. No real life school of philosophy can truly entirely exclude the role of emotion without contradicting itself or otherwise causing harm, and so therefore neither can fictional philosophy. The Star Wars prequels show the harm in this, and even though it is fictional, the complete neglect of emotion and the consequent issues are supported in real life.

Emotion does not belong to a "light" or a "dark" side as it is made to seem in Star Wars, but even the originals conflict this sentiment. If anything, the prequels exist to show that sentiment is actually the downfall of an entire order.

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Ghosts of Mortis. Dir. Steward Lee. By Christian Taylor. Perf. Matt Lanter, Lloyd Sherr, James Arnold Taylor. Lucasfilm, 2011. Television.

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Lewis, Michael, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones, and Lisa Feldman. Barrett.Handbook of Emotions. New York: Guilford, 2008. Print.

Overlords. Dir. Steward Lee. By Christian Taylor. Perf. Matt Lanter, James Arnold Taylor, Ashley Eckstein. Lucasfilm, 2011. Tevision.

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Return of the Jedi. Dir. Richard Marquand. By Lawrence Kasdan and George Lucas. Perf. Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Billy Dee Williams. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, 1983.

Revenge of the Sith. By George Lucas. Dir. George Lucas. Prod. George Lucas and Rick McCallum. Perf. Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, and Hayden Christensen. 20th Century Fox, 2005.

Shaw, Daniel. Reason and Feeling in Hume's Action Theory and Moral Philosophy: Hume's Reasonable Passion. Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen, 1998. Print.

Simpson, Ian M. "Jedi vs. Sith: Who Are the Real Good Guys? Star Wars Episode 7 HOPES!" Moviepilot.com. Movie Pilot, 10 Nov. 2014. Web. 18 July 2016.

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The Wrong Jedi. Dir. Dave Filoni. By George Lucas and Charles Murray. Perf. Matt Lanter, Ashley Eckstein, Nika Futterman, Meredith Salenger. Lucasfilm, 2013. Television.

#This is too much #I'm sorry #Anakin Skywalker #Darth Vader #Jedi order #jedi code #sith code #fucking long ass post #im sorry #long post #philosophy #philosophy of star wars #clone wars #revenge of the sith #obi wan kenobi #aristotle #academic essay

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