#anti kenobi series

[aj-artjunkyard]

I think the prequels should’ve made Owen Lars Anakin’s full brother. I think we should’ve had gruff 19/20 year old completely Force-null Owen in TPM and make the audience assume for a moment that that’s young Darth Vader, but nope, it’s the tiny blond Yippee boy who’s playing with droids.

I want to play with old Ben’s line about Uncle Owen in ANH “He thought (Anakin) should’ve stayed here, not gotten involved (in the clone wars)” as Owen urging Anakin to quit the Order in AOTC because a war is brewing in the Republic, telling him their mother sent Anakin away to be safe, and would never approve of him becoming a soldier.

Then Uncle Owen in OWK with that same dismissive attitude towards Obi-Wan but this time it’s not just protectiveness of Luke but also because he blames the Jedi for corrupting his little brother

[autistic-ben-tennyson]

A rant about Jedi Stans from an ex-Jedi fangirl

After some time I've had to reflect on my own behavior as well as my time in the pro Jedi fandom, I decided it's time to call this shit out. Some people take it really personal if someone criticized your favorite characters or their beliefs. Ironically, you all act more like the Sith than the Jedi with how obsessive you can be and insisting any criticism is equal to wanting genocide.

I'm going to start by saying I was in the pro jedi fandom for a few months. Truth be told, I was using it as an outlet for some of my anger issues with my hate towards Anakin, seeing him as similar to a lot of people I've had to deal with. Some of it was wanting more followers and fear of being disliked by the majority. I would pick fights with Anakin fans and was a bit of an asshole and I apologize for that. I still don't like him but no longer HATE him. Seeing how fandoms treat abuse victims who aren't perfect angels like Shinji Ikari or Lapis Lazuli has caused me to loosen up a bit. Many Jedi stans would probably hate those characters for not being “perfect” victims. In retrospect, this wasn't a good community for me. It was very puritanical and I often felt like I was wrong for enjoying media that went against the beliefs Jedi Stans put on a pedestal. Three of my favorite ships (Madohomu, Reishin and Hodaka x Hina) involve "burning the world for one person" and I felt like I couldn't talk about them without being a hypocrite. That and me agreeing less and less with Luca's beliefs pushed me to leave.

It's fine to enjoy a fictional character and defend them if you feel that they're being unfairly criticized. I've done it myself and have written essays defending my faves. The problem is that Jedi stans don't know when to stop. So many are quick to compare the Jedi to minority religions or marginalized groups as a shield against criticism, not recognizing how insulting that can be. Jewish, asian and aroace people are the ones normally used due to the Jedi beliefs being based off Eastern religions as well as Judaism as well as some aroace people identifying with the Jedi.

One thing I noticed about Jedi stans is their similarities to Jumblr which is full of religious chauvinism reworded to sound progressive. Many of them talk about how the Jedi shouldn't have to change their traditions with the times or to accommodate a few individuals like Anakin or Ahsoka. This can be similar to how a lot of people are quick to defend minority religions from outside criticism based on how they were treated by Christian colonists or missionaries. The problem is that this can veer right into ableist or queerphobic territory. You know who else believe that their religion shouldn't have to change with the times to accommodate people? Conservative Christians who hate being told to be affirming of LGBTQ people. Also, schools and parents/guardians do have a responsibility to accommodate kids with disabilities, mental health issues or trauma, even if it may be inconvenient or force you to bend the rules. Claiming they need to just suck it up is honestly disgusting.

This was all a big reason for why I left this garbage pit of a fandom. While there are some who hate the Jedi because they stan the empire or think people need 50s nuclear families to live fulfilling lives, not everyone does that. Believe it or not, some people have faced abuse and bigotry under Judaism and Buddhism. People can also criticize how Lucas presented their beliefs as some Buddhists think he didn't do a good job. Libsoftiktok is a vile transphobe, an Orthodox Jew and her beliefs are said to be fairly common in her community. Many people of color identify with the clones and dislike how even the nicer Jedi treated them. When Obi Wan told Anakin, "It's okay to have romantic feelings, but you must let them pass," that hits different for queer people who have been told similar things from "polite" homophobes. Some queer people do choose celibacy like Side B christians which is fine as long as they don't treat it as a moral failure to want a relationship. There are many neurodivergent people who don't like the Jedi beliefs as they hit close to home. Lucas may have not intended to come off as ableist but the Jedi did with their beliefs about negative emotions. To some people, platitudes like "just let go" aren't helpful and treating it as bad for not living up to those principles is gross.

I deleted the post, but a while back I made a post asking a popular pro jedi blogger their views on adoption since they claimed Anakin not viewing the Jedi as his "found family" was a moral failure. I found their response to be tone deaf and insulting. I responded in a decent way of course, but felt a bit judged and unhappy for wanting to know my birth mother. Adoptees are another set of people this fandom is insensitive and gross to. The Kenobi series I find insulting for that reason too, having Leia be a foil for Anakin and Obi Wan romanticize his recruitment as a child.

Jedi fans are also shitty to those with religious trauma and who faced abuse. Accusing anyone who criticizes the Jedi of projecting their issues with Christianity while simultaneously talking like conservatives as shown above. Tumblr in general has a weird habit of treating religion as if it’s either conservative evangelicalism, liberal reform Judaism and some vague pagan or eastern spirituality with little nuance. Some Jedi stans really come from a place of privilege. Claiming "they can just leave" is insulting to real religious abuse survivors who were raised with harmful beliefs like creationism or homophobia. I'm no antitheist but treating non christian religion as inherently progressive dismisses a lot of people's experiences.

Let's be real, the writing in this franchise was always a bit sloppy. Lucas's issue was wanting to simultaneously create both a black-and-white morality tale for kids based on the fairy tales and serials he grew up and a deep socio-political commentary about the Vietnam and Iraq wars which required some morally grey themes. Thus, along with his terrible dialogue that made the characters seem unlikable, is why the fandom is so divided over whether he intended people to agree with the prequel Jedi.

To wrap this up, I found the pro jedi fandom to be a terrible experience. It was a mix of faux progressivism mixed with fear of judgement for disagreeing. I ended up editing a post I made, and eventually deleted, comparing Yoda with Garnet from SU because I included a tiny bit of criticism and didn't want to get backlash. As long as it’s not gross or bigoted criticism of your favorite characters isn't the end of the world. People don't have to like George Lucas or his beliefs and put them on a pedestal. I feel like the fandom's worship of George comes in response to OT purists who claimed he "raped their childhoods" but there's fair criticism to be made. Just like how not everyone who criticizes Disney SW or any Disney media in general is an "anti woke" grifter. To the pro jedi fans reading this, here's a suggestion. Just block and ignore people, write an essay if you feel it's important, but don't act like an entitled bully if a blog or even a SW writer disagrees with the Jedi, interprets the story differently or criticizes your favorite characters.

[lieutenant-teach]

Rewatched OWK and compared Reva and Osha/Mae – these characters and their actresses met hatred based on racism. Personally I can say I liked Reva and disliked Osha/Mae. And it has much to do with acting.

Frankly, I don’t understand why this rabid dislike of Reva? Moses Ingram is a good actress and her character is consistent in her motivations and actions. She has certain presence on-screen and interesting character development. It’s not her problem that she didn’t meet expectations of fanboys who wanted flashy lightsaber fights with no substance. On the contrary, Amandla Stenberg’s acting is atrocious – I didn’t see her in any other projects, but in ‘The Acolyte’ she was outright weak. She maintains the same blank expression through most of the scenes – in her both roles. There’s no difference between Osha and Mae – same mannerisms, same mimics, same general aura. Yes, the script was awful, and the directing is evidently lacking, but a really talented actor/actress can pull it off at least partially – like Lee Jung-jae or Manny Jacinto. Even while given less time and less depth of the characters, Charlie Barnett and Dafne Keen weren’t this level of bland and emotionless.

It doesn’t matter if Stenberg is non-binary or black, I have an impression that she’s just not that great of an actress to manage playing two complicated (in theory) characters at once. So the opinions about her bleak acting are justified, IMO.

[short-wooloo]

"Shin is simply a better character than Reva"

HOW!?

She has barely any characterization!

8 episodes and we know nothing about her!

And don't give me that "well 2nd season" crap! She's apparently a major character, we shouldn't have to wait 2-3 years for a second season to learn anything about her!

[thecleverqueer]

I’ve mentioned this before, but it bares repeating because it really bothers me…

Why can’t Obi-Wan and Ahsoka see Anakin and Vader as one person? Like, the cognitive dissonance of it all… and they do see Anakin and Vader as two separate people… somehow.

I THOUGHT Ahsoka got it. I thought she’d finally accepted that, but no… she’s still on her bullshit.

Your master was an asshole. A harbinger of doom. He damned the Galaxy. He performed multiple genocides, and personally slaughtered children. He did stand by you for a minute, yes, but ultimately, he attempted to murder you and would have if you didn’t have a god-bird that coaxed force sensitive teenagers into a space/ time portal to bail your ass out.

Maybe we need to stage an intervention between Ahsoka, Obi-Wan and the Tuskin Raiders so that they can tell their story. Oh. Right, they’re still dead.

[fanfictasia]

Thoughts on what Vader wanted with Obi-Wan in OWK

(For all Obi-Wan series haters, this isn’t for you.)

I had really high expectations for the Obi-Wan Series and they were all surpassed. It always felt to me that something was missing between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, because what Vader and Obi-Wan were saying to each other never really fit together, but I couldn’t figure out why. When Vader said “Obi-Wan once thought as you do” in Return of the Jedi, I could never figure out what he was talking about.

But the Obi-Wan series answered all my questions, especially on what Vader feels towards Obi-Wan.

I’ve seen a lot of people assuming Vader was trying to kill Obi-Wan, and some complaining about how Vader wasn’t being portrayed properly because he was being “stupid” sometimes when he should have realistically killed Obi-Wan. For some reason they’re automatically assuming that because Vader killed him in A New Hope, that means that’s what he always wanted to do.

The third episode showed very obviously that Vader does **not** want Obi-Wan dead. He could easily have killed him the fight if he wanted, or let him die in the fire, but he didn’t.

Vader very clearly wanted him alive. He put out that fire almost immediately and told the troopers to bring Obi-Wan to him. He told him “your pain is just beginning” so yeah, he obviously didn’t want him dead.

Repeatedly Vader talks about “destroying “ Obi-Wan and “breaking” him. That’s what Sith say when they want to make someone Fall.

Everything Vader is doing after that very much implies the same, too.

When Obi-Wan said “I will do what I must” implying that it was going to be a fight to the death, the way Vader was standing very much implied he was not happy. There were numerous points in their duel that Vader was clearly holding back, another obvious sign that he did **not** want to kill him.

He said “but you are still weak” which is how Sith always refer to the Light Side, before he threw him in that pit, and started burying him. Vader knows Obi-Wan well enough to know there’s no way he was going to die from that.

But doing that **did** work in making Obi-Wan very angry, and close to (if not actually) drawing on the Dark Side. Obi-Wan was drawing on his attachments to get out of that situation, and that is very Dark Side. Jedi are always supposed to be calm, and definitely never draw on their attachments to give them power.

Vader said that he killed Anakin, the same way he will “destroy” Obi-Wan. There’s nothing that can mean except that he wanted to turn him. That was how Vader “destroyed” Anakin, after all.

And from there, it’s pretty easy to see why Sidious was acting how he was in that final scene with Vader. He asked him if he was sure his feelings on the matter were clear, the exact same thing he asked Vader when he was obsessing over finding and turning Luke.

And he said “perhaps your feelings for your old master have left you weakened.” And that means he obviously knew that Vader still cared about Obi-Wan. Even if you could argue that he partly wanted to turn Obi-Wan out of revenge, it was also clearly for a similar reason that he did with Luke. As far as Sith are concerned, that’s kind of a Dark Side form of affection, after all. xD At least Vader’s when it comes to his family. So yeah, of course Sidious was very unhappy about that.

That much is obvious anyway from Vader calling for Obi-Wan at the end when he left him again. I’ve seen some people claim he was “screaming his name out of hatred” and by the way, that literally makes no sense. There was so absolutely no hatred in his tone. He sounded **broken**. If that were true, why didn’t he say “Kenobi?” Also WHO WASTES THEIR BREATH SCREAMING IN HATRED WHEN THEY CAN HARDLY BREATH?

And of course after Vader had to immediately tell Sidious that “Kenobi means nothing” and stop looking for him if he didn’t want to face the consequences.

That pretty much answers why Vader killed Obi-Wan in A New Hope. He knew he couldn’t turn Obi-Wan anymore and he knew when they met again, one of them was going to come out dead. From Vader’s point of view, Obi-Wan already made it abundantly clear that he didn’t consider Vader even worth his time enough to kill.

And for the record, I think it was just plain too painful for him watch Obi-Wan walk away for a third time.

The Obi-Wan Series also really explains why Vader seemed more numb and resigned when they fought each other in A New Hope, instead of angry, which just doesn’t seem very likely if this is the first time they’ve seen each other since Mustafar. That never made sense to me, even before. In the end, Vader did try to escape Sidious, so he went to the only other person he could fathom calling master, and we all know how that turned out. No wonder he seemed so robotic and just blinding following orders by ANH. He didn’t have any hopes beyond Sidious, until he heard about Luke again, and that “spark” you could say, of resistance, was back again.

[inquisitor-apologist]

Hoping and praying that the whole whitewashed ass batch dies and Disney actually lets the clones look like Temuera Morrison

[kyliafanfiction]

The thing is, Andor may be great.

But since the people praising it to the skies are the same people who thought Kenobi sucked, their taste in media is very suspect, at least in terms of us liking similar things.

[short-wooloo]

Y'know, this also explains why certain folk looooove ahsoka but hate Kenobi

It's the same thing as what I talked about in my post on why some people are so rabid about their hatred for Reva

They're stanakins

Kenobi is a show that calls Anakin the fuck out, it's blunt about who Anakin is and what he's done, the major characters of the show (Obi-Wan, Reva, Leia) are all people who have/will have been hurt by him or been a firsthand witness to Anakin's atrocities

Kenobi doesn't pull its punches, the show doesn't deny that Anakin was once good, but it makes it clear that he is not anymore

Ahsoka does not do that, it desperately skirts around the ugliness

Look I'm not necessarily saying there's a super deep meaning to this, but the Ahsoka show is one of the first ones at this point NOT to have an Order 66 flashback in it somewhere. The Kenobi show obviously had several, TBB started the entire thing on Order 66, Grogu's flashbacks first happened in TBOBF and then made their way into The Mandalorian later as well, and even Jedi: Fallen Order had an entire Order 66 sequence.

I know Ahsoka obviously had her own Order 66 two parter back in TCW season 7, but the fact that this was a show centered on a Jedi who survived Order 66 and is one of the first to actually NEVER touch on Order 66 feels notable.

Ahsoka is dealing with her feelings about Anakin and that betrayal and they showed us the SIEGE OF MANDALORE, but not Order 66 and her struggle to survive on the ship and the realization that the clones were mind controlled and the devastation of having to bury everyone they could find? How is that NOT relevant to the discussion at hand and the things she is feeling? What was the point of showing the Siege of Mandalore when Anakin isn't even AT that battle and has nothing to do with it and the only relevance it had was "You're a soldier now" which would be just as true in some of her battles on the venator during Order 66, except that the reason she's fighting for her life is because Anakin made a choice that explicitly put her in danger.

Like I said, I don't know that it got left out FOR A REASON in one of the shows it would've been most relevant to show it in, but it does feel like it leaves a very noticeable absence.

[spideytingley]

my fic recs!

marvel

peter parker

identity crisis by @heliads

bucky barnes

time after time (on-going series) by @intrepidacious

heal me, baby by @intrepidacious

first date, last night by @intrepidacious

little lion man by @wkemeup

these ties that bind by sweetascanbee on ao3

steve rogers

no other shade of blue by @barnesafterglow

love bites (series) by starfleetstgmgr on ao3

invisible string (series) by gracehateseggnog on ao3

pietro maximoff

hole in the wall by @sebsbarnes

realign by @astxrwar soulmate au

percy jackson and the olympians

luke castellan

a place with you by @supercutszns

fighting chance by @supercutszns

rotten to the touch by @supercutszns

bleedin’ me dry by @atlabeth

i beg you (and you don’t understand) by @emiliehornby

daylight, part 2, part 3 by @tangledinlove

percy jackson

anti-curse by @kamaluhkhan

dc

dick grayson

the moon will sing (on-going series) by minnieears on ao3

jason todd

window pains by @sanguineterrain

reflections of you by dizarys on ao3

romantics by @yourlocalcringydaydreamer

suds and buds (yeah, sure) (series) by sbambs on ao3

baby steps (on-going series) by @lightwing-s

she hates me (series) by minnieears on ao3

damian wayne

flowers (series) by stargazer_lily_1996 on ao3. soulmate au

tim drake

late night park walks by @lightwing-s

sleepless nights by starkk on ao3. soulmate au

who we are (on-going series) by minnieears on ao3

the hunger games

finnick odair

our song and dance (on-going series) by @mrs-kmikaelson

one for the road by @libertyybellls

lover/fighter (on-going series) by aurabella on ao3 @bluemidnightmelody

cato

supernova (on-going series) by glossyybabie on ao3

it might kill me (on-going series) by frick6101719 on ao3

grishaverse

kaz brekker

bejeweled by @reve-writes

dense by @reve-writes

nikolai lantsov

come on back to me by @atlabeth

bad luck by @atlabeth

nine long years (on-going series) by @ellewritesalright

enchanted by @in-my-feels-probably

a familiar melody by thehistoriangirl on ao3

bridgerton

benedict bridgerton

drunk sketches by @delehosies

a lady’s guide to surviving the ton by @atlabeth

ACOTAR

azriel

the green emotion by @utterlyazriel

love will unravel me (so please keep your hands held tight) by @utterlyazriel

daughter of autumn by @writingcroissant

nightlight (on-going series) by @azsazz

cassian

flames and embers by @hellodarling1357

star wars

anakin skywalker

shifting gears by awritesthings1 on ao3

the handmaiden (on-going series) by rufflesandbows on ao3

my very soul (on-going series) by skywalkerog on ao3 @anakinskywalkerog

obi-wan kenobi

fleeting moments (series) by fitzfiles on ao3

[emilykaldwen]

THE MAIDEN AND THE DROWNING BOY is a House of the Dragon canon divergent fix-it trilogy with a HEA. Meshing both show and book canon, the story asks the question: How do you stop the cycles of abuse and generational trauma? In this universe, Aegon marries the youngest daughter of Lyonel Strong, the Lady Abrogail, who has grown up alongside him and his siblings. The story begins with the run up to their marriage in 125 AC, and follows Aegon and Abrogail as they figure out who they are and who they are together in the Riverlands, along with Aemond and Helaena in King's Landing, and to the dawn of the Dance of Dragons. Except the ending of the song is different this time.

pairings: aegon ii targaryen x oc, eventual jacaerys x helaena, other canon ships mentioned, other pairings to be announced warnings: suicidal ideation, sexual shame and purity pushing, canon typical violence, canon typical attitudes, unpacking of previously stated sexual shame/purity for both male and female characters

This is not an anti/pro team black or green fic. I continue to do my best to approach all sides with nuance. There will be no bashing, nor will I accept any in the comments.

[this fic series will have three separate parts and maintains an 'at least once a month' posting schedule (due to life reasons)]

No Tag List. Follow @emkald-fic and turn on post notifications or subscribe on AO3.

Tumblr: Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen | Chapter Seventeen | Chapter Eighteen | Chapter Nineteen | Chapter Twenty | Chapter Twenty-One | Chapter Twenty-Two | Chapter Twenty-Three | Twenty-Four | Twenty-Five

AO3: Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen | Chapter Seventeen | Chapter Eighteen | Chapter Nineteen | Chapter Twenty | Chapter Twenty-One | Chapter Twenty-Two | Chapter Twenty-Three | Twenty-Four | Twenty-Five

AO3

Wattpad (for those who prefer to read there. Updates are not matched to AO3)

Fic Tag

Ship Tag

Abrogail Tag

Spoiler Free Family Tree

Timeline of Events (please note the adjusted ages from the source material)

Abrogail Epithet Gif Set

Arc One Promo Set

Aegon and Abby - A Soft Evening Commission by @winterofherdiscontent

Aegon and Abby - A Lazy Morning by @debustee

Abrogail Commission by @astarionbae

Fanart/Content by others - If you made something for this fic, please @ me and tag #useremka

Abrogail Fanart by @selfproclaimedunicorn

Abrogail Fanart by @murmel-malt

Sunlight Gif Set by @dragonsbone

Vampire!Abby x Aegon fanart by @murmel-malt

Aegon and Abby Dancing by @murmel-malt

Abby Moodboard by @rainwingmarvel7

Abby Dress designs by @chic-beyond-the-wall-oc-acct

Abby Portrait commissioned by a follower and art by @shripscapi

Aegon and Abby as Eros and Psyche by @murmel-malt

Transformative Works Policy below the cut

Transformative Works Policy: I do not give my permission to have this work put into generative AI or cross-posted somewhere else under your name. If you are looking to translate my work, please contact me first. Translations are ONLY allowed on AO3 following their translation policy, or Ficbook. Podfic is also allowed as long as I am contacted first to discuss.

As of right now, @vampire-exgirlfriend, @selfproclaimedunicorn, @darkwolf76, and @queen--kenobi only have permission to utilize Abrogail Strong in their works. If you want to write something inspired by or utilize my OCs in any way, please reach out to me first.

[gh0stlyb34r]

Welcome to my blog!

logan / johnny / astrid ⌇ 19 ⌇ agere

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youtubers ; smii7y , blarg , bigpuffer , elasticdroid , pezzy , grizzy , warn , frogger , aspen , james marriott , willne , critical role , george clarkey , flats , kryoz , cam kirkham , sinjin drowning , dawko , game theory , gtlive , keeoh , film cooper

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other blogs

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my tags

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[lieutenant-teach]

I don’t understand people shitting on ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ and ‘The Book of Boba Fett’. Loved both series. I found them quite exciting – both were interesting (rewatched recently), lovely character development, good acting. I don’t even have a lot of qualms with the plots. Yes, probably pacing should’ve been better, but in general – very positive impression from both series. Unlike from ‘Ahsoka’ when absolutely fine characters from previous projects become unlikable as people (looking at Ahsoka ‘attachments are ok and Jedi kinda suck, only I’m perfect’ Tano and Sabine ‘fuck everything and everyone – I nullify Ezra’s sacrifice, and also I act like an insolent moody teenager at my 30s’ Wren), and as a whole, I found ‘Ahsoka’ boring. ‘The Acolyte’ – notorious for disjointed actions, flip-flopping motivations and shitting on previously established almost 45-year-old canon.

‘OWK’ features authentic Star Wars atmosphere. It was captivating to follow Obi-Wan’s change, same as Reva’s and Leia’s. I was touched by the moment with Darth Vader’s broken mask when we see Anakin’s face peeking out of it and his voice teetering on edge of Anakin’s natural and Vader’s mechanical, showing that we shouldn’t distinguish these two (as Disney loves now) – they’re one. Almost shed a tear at Jedi symbol scribblings on walls – representation that for lots of common citizens Jedi are still a symbol of hope (that, as we know, will come). Owen and Beru, Bail and Breha – caring and loving parents for their respective nephew and daughter. Obi-Wan coming back from his depression and finding hope again, relieving his heart of burden of smth that wasn’t his fault. Agrh, lovely.

‘TBOBF’ shares Star-Wars’y Tatooinian atmosphere with ‘OWK’ – except episodes of ‘The Mandalorian’. Frankly, I felt put off by a sudden change in color scheme – from warm sandy to cold metallic (ep.5-6). I really think the creatives should have focused on Boba alone – tell more about his relationships with his new associates and with the town citizens, could’ve touched slavery problem (if he did anything with it, I’d love if he did), how he holds his business. Also instead of following Mando (who has his own series!!!) I’d enjoy talking more about Boba’s past, his relationship with his father’s legacy and how he feels about leaving it behind, if he identifies himself as a Mandalorian or a Tusken or his own thing, how he feels about his clone ancestry… Lots of interesting themes to explore. I loved his character development, I adore that he’s not depicted as this heartless hunter from the books. Also he should’ve been given more agency in his ruling (the bigger part is done by Fennec). But still – I rewatch his episodes with pleasure.

[organizationhimself]

just kinda having some thinky thoughts about how dark road totally rewired eraqus's character and what a phenomenal job they did.

like here's your problem you have. you need to take this cloistered old man who raised his students in the jedi way, somehow put up with Old Man Villainy being That Way presumably on the regular, lost every last iota of his shit and turned on the Apocalypse Child he adopted as well as his surrogate son who was infested with The Evil (which the series has long established as not necessarily being good or bad without context) to say nothing of the headtrip he gave his direct heir, and you need to reduce him to a version of himself as a child that is. like. fun. someone who has a genuine friendship with xehanort and is regarded by xehanort as someone who is a "sly fox," i.e. not the sort of buffoon who tests for mastery of the keyblade by child-proofing some orbs of light.

where do you even begin?

YOU TRAUMATIZE THE UNGODLY HELL OUT OF HI--okay i'm getting ahead of myself, let's start with principles.

because eraqus is principled. he believes really firmly in the light in a way that's nearly sora-adjacent in its intensity, but the thing is that sora has this flexibility that eraqus was simply not raised to appreciate. yes, nomura, we understand you like the bright sunshine one and the wry brooding one, you did it with sora and riku, god knows what you did to axel's spine to fit him into the sunshine kid's mold next to isa as brooding anti-crybaby, and now we're doing the same thing to eraqus. ok. i love it when you're optimistic, let's do it.

so first we need confidence. easy; he's a smug little rich kid. worked for riku didn't it? (source: kh1 manga, and the fact that you cannot convince me anyone can maintain a kid with that build on a budget) but we also need to see how dark road changed him as a person. let's contrast his uptight stick-up-his-ass future with a present day class clown who doesn't take things seriously; a headstrong fighter who jokes that he'll just run away. and hey speaking of emotional damage, let's start easing into the inevitable terrible, horrific, unspeakable traumas we're going to visit on this defenseless creature with a little one as a treat:

HIT HIM RIGHT IN THE GRANDPA.

and there you go! we now have a source for eraqus's rejection of the darkness that is not simply a function of his career as a jedi keyblade master, but has an actual personal experience he can point back to in order to say "hey, darkness is the pits!! here is why." it sets the stage early for him to be already butting heads with xehanort, who takes a much more flexible look at the worlds and the way they work and is more willing to view things from the perspective that he is not an authority on the moral peculiarities of whatever world he is currently inhabiting.

xehanort is also a child of destiny [citation needed]. an isolated visitant who was born for finer things but never slept a day in his life without waking up with sand in his mouth until he reached out and took his fate in his bare hands and let it drag him all the way to scala.

where he met the blueblooded child of a keybearing legacy thousands of years in the making, just like his.

and suddenly what you have are unwitting equals. we're ready to set them both up at the chess board; eraqus's legacy is plain, he moves first and he makes no apologies for it because it's his birthright. but xehanort's half of the board is still buried in shadow, implied but never stated, never surrendered to eraqus's probing questions or revealed by his moves, but already aimed at a clash with destiny, fated, inevitable.

shall we say, already written.

and this is brilliant!! now we have a source for our "sly fox," a reason for xehanort to be extremely familiar with the way eraqus thinks (and not to star wars on main but the obi-wan kenobi series did something really similar to this narratively by using anakin and obi-wan's familiarity with each others' fighting styles to predict the actions they would take in a situation, and i will actually never be over it in my life, absolutely stealing it for a xehaqus fic sometime, just shamelessly mugging ewan mcgregor in the street for that solid gold good shit). not only that, but we also have an explanation for xehanort's motivations as described by kh3. he is not looking at the fight from the perspective of one of the pawns; he is looking at the fight as a player, deciding which pawn gets taken. selecting which rook to sacrifice in exchange for the queen.

and eraqus is opposite him, doing the exact same thing (sort of, kh3 was a little cerebral with that), but there's an important difference here that we'll come back to later on.

so, okay. we have a vague outline in the shape of a sunshine kid now. he has confidence tied to his role in society, his legacy gives him perspective, his trauma ensures that he will one day calcify against the darkness with such emphasis that he will unwittingly pad the therapy bills of an entire generation. so far so good.

but uh, yeah, his kids? he fights them? like okay, axel has his differences with his kids too but he's not trying to kill them (mostly). eraqus really definitely for real is, and ven is defenseless. so that'ssss...hard to square with the sunshine kid we're building, nomura, how do we explain that? we really can't handwave it as amnesia this time, we're not working with ansem the wise here.

(BALDR. BALDR IS HOW--

ok but wait wait wait, before we even get to baldr, there's something we can do:

make eraqus impulsive.

and i mean impulsive. make eraqus spoil for a fight with so much unmitigated howler monkey energy that he will fight his friends just to vent. (this isn't even a unique thing, riku and xion and even sora do it all the time, and we're not here to talk about ven's crimes against miners but it's clear that violence is a spoken language in kh.) eraqus is fluent, so we're making it so that all of eraqus's intensity and passion can be focused on a single point if xehanort pushes exactly the right switches in his head.

and then, y'know, yeah. make baldr slaughter all of his classmates, several of them right in front of him, because of unchecked darkness and baldr's own inability to see past his own grief and resentment for long enough to understand that all he's really doing is inflicting his own suffering on other people in a murderstorm of nihilism and bitterness. unrelenting trauma conga line, check.

and now we have almost all the elements. eraqus's principles can't allow him to accept darkness, both because his grandfather was lost to it and because it left him (by all accounts a bourgeois slacker at the bottom of his class, someone vidar doesn't even consider as a candidate for one of the lights despite what baldr has to say about eraqus as a light source) one of the only survivors of an event that completely resculpted his life and community. time to pack him off to the jedi temple land of departure to be least okayest teacher of the year, right?

well...no. we need eraqus to wait.

because he doesn't take on students. and doesn't, and doesn't, for decades. first he fights xehanort, and as we have established he is spoiling for that fight (white moves first!). and then when xehanort finally visits him to drop off that half-dead kid he found (ven was like that already shhh), he's kind of like politely like "oh, you have apprentices. they seem...bright," like he's congratulating eraqus on finally reaching a life stage that eraqus should have hit approximately 50 years ago, and eraqus is like "yeah yeah whatever shut up anyway YOU'VE got one too now right." (yen sid talks about the role of "seeker" like it's a different thing from "keyblade master" so that's where i'm extrapolating this distinction from, but regardless i don't think anyone ever seriously expected xehanort to take on students.)

my point here is that eraqus waited until the last possible opportunity to take on students. to carry on the legacy that was so important to him as a child, and to re-experience the closest thing to the camaraderie he had as a keybearer-in-training that he could ever have back. that is how impactful baldr's actions were for eraqus.

i'm veering completely into speculation now but i think eraqus was terrified. how could he not be? his class wasn't even taking the mark of mastery and still got decimated by it. how could he risk going through that again, but from odin's perspective this time? what guarantee would he ever have to avoid the same tragedy his master had failed to prevent?

so, NOW we know why eraqus's mark of mastery was a handful of light pinatas and a duel. (i like to think xehanort felt a certain level of professional embarrassment for him and wanted to make it just a little more like a real challenge.)

(this is a sidebar and i'm going to talk about my other blorbo for a second but terra has a beautiful dream of being a sly manipulator. that's why he doesn't worry about investing himself in villain schemes, because he assumes he'll see the snare coming before he gets his head caught in it, but it's never coming from directly in front of him like he expects. so this is a dream that will never come true, but he has it, and i think given what we knew about eraqus as early as blank points, its only possible source is a master who was strict and exacting, but--very occasionally--also a sly fox who secretly delighted in his students' nascent abilities to surprise and outwit him.)

back to the trauma, we also have, obviously, the explanation for eraqus's attitude towards terra, and later ven. terra is a tragedy in slow motion that eraqus has seen happen before. baldr was unable to control his darkness; it overwhelmed him, and eraqus does not have the context that xehanort does, that baldr was in some ways a product of his own darkness-shunning society. even if eraqus does have that context, i can't really see him agreeing with it--and even if he at one point agreed with it, he would have gotten that context from the same guy who last showed up at his house talking about kicking off the apocalypse for the vine.

so like. eraqus has never seen any damn thing in his whole life that doesn't confirm his bias against the darkness. does that make him innocent of parenting Incorrectly? no, he is a Bad Dad. does it explain his hopelessly unsuccessful parenting strategies? yes, it does.

what it reinforces is also that eraqus didn't want to have to fight terra and ven. the original bbs is honestly not very good about establishing this: he cries one Sad Tear. yawn. still child abuse, asshole! the stakes in bbs are also not very well established, because there's approximately six people in it and some of them are just the same guy over again, so we don't really have a sense that terra being taken over by the darkness is like...gonna mean something to eraqus that is sincerely worth the personal cost of killing him. since we're clearly no longer worried about ven, there aren't other students to protect (besides aqua, but she's a really hard sell on the "needs to be protected from terra with so much urgency he must not live another moment" front). there is no immediacy to ven's status as Apocalypse Child; if anything vanitas seems like the obviously more important threat, and maybe eraqus should be less concerned about weeding out students and more focused on vetting friends like Old Man So Clearly The Villain My Guy. bbs eraqus is just genuinely hard to like as a character.

but now we have dark road context.

and white moves first.

eraqus is not seeing terra or ven in that moment, he's seeing baldr. he's seeing the summoning of kingdom hearts that almost was, and he is gripped by meticulously prearranged, bone-deep, irrational, traumatized, unbridled impulse. the emotion must vent. the thing he was powerless to stop has returned to haunt him and he must resist it. he knows what will happen if terra strikes him down here and heads back out into the worlds in search of other hearts, other lights. he knows.

but terra resists, using the full spectrum of his strength without remorse, and it is only when eraqus's keyblade is ready to fall from his hand that he realizes the truth:

My own heart is darkness.

and when this happened in the original birth by sleep all i could think was yeah star wars dad!! nailed it your heart IS darkness you fuckin dillweed, about time!! what took you so long!!

but after dark road, this context is completely changed. eraqus is not just realizing that he fucked up.

he is realizing that he fucked up the exact same way baldr fucked up.

that he let his own grief and suffering cloud his judgment and guide his blade to strike out at his loved ones. that instead of finding a way to live with what's already happened to ven, what was long ago fated for terra, he turned his resentment outward and gave that darkness leave to consume them both whole.

but unlike baldr, eraqus regrets it.

it is that moment that xehanort cuts him down anyway, not because eraqus can't be saved the way baldr couldn't but because xehanort is cleaving away the last of his own attachments to the world so he can follow through with the rest of his plans, and i am SO NORMAL ABOUT THI

but okay anyway. eraqus has exactly one move left.

he can't see the board. unlike xehanort, he has no extra pieces of himself he can just bandy about; the warriors of light must assemble without any of his direct input, chasing the echoes of eraqus's students and pushing and pulling in reaction to xehanort's steady advance through the center. he has only one chance. he can't afford to waste it.

the kings are meeting in the middle of the board. the stalemate will come any moment, when they're both out of moves and out of time, leaving the fate of the worlds undecided.

and it is at this moment that eraqus pulls the same penultimate move that xehanort himself used on baldr, confronting him with the first victim his darkness ever struck down. eraqus almost doesn't have to say anything, at all, because xehanort has to know what it means. has to know what it says.

xehanort resists. the world is too far gone. too many horrible things can happen in it; it must be reset. not purged and filled with darkness, like baldr wanted, but returned to a state that can never mutate into the conditions that made baldr exist in the first place. that doomed all their classmates to die. it's too late.

For us, perhaps...but not for them.

and now we go back to the distinction.

the thing that makes xehanort's chess game different from eraqus's is that, for xehanort, it's only chess. the pieces he's moving have ceased to exist in his mind as individuals. they are pawns on a line of white and black squares, and they may weave away from his will here or there but they cannot be swayed from their march.

eraqus never forgets.

and it's actually eraqus's capacity for forgiveness that i haven't even touched on yet. this isn't a word i ever expected to associate with him, but eraqus spends dark road forgiving. five minutes after any altercation he's already forgotten about it. name-calling. arguments. rejection. opposition. full-on fighting.

murders.

when xehanort kills baldr, eraqus is still calling out for him to stop. when xehanort later strikes out at him with darkness (the thing eraqus is scared of the most!!), permanently disfiguring him, eraqus has already forgiven him before seeing him the next time in person.

he does not forget that baldr is a person in spite of his darkness, and eraqus doesn't want him to be killed for it. that terra is a person in spite of his darkness, and eraqus doesn't want to see it consume him. that ven is a person in spite of the darkness that was cleaved from him, and eraqus doesn't want to see it return.

(if you think about it the real tragedy is that we were robbed of him looking aqua in the eye and telling her that she isn't tainted forever, that it did not take her, and even if it had, that will always, always matter less than her finding her way back. i refuse to believe terra was not already made aware of these facts.)

but he also does not forget that xehanort is not a faceless player in the skies, impossible to convince of the significance of a pawn; he remembers that xehanort, too, is still a person.

this point is important because eraqus's last move is not a checkmate (I KNOW HE SAYS CHECKMATE but it is not checkmate), but it is calculated to produce something else: a concession. he doesn't need the board to support his win or xehanort's loss; he needs the player on the other side to put down the pieces and follow his beacon out of the dark.

and that is how nomura shows us our sunshine kid at last, fully formed, as he takes xehanort's burdens from him and spirits them both well beyond the reach of the board.

anyway yeah microwaving him in my brain along with axel (and also roxas and terra because if i don't collect all my blorbos AND their hot mess dads i'll never fill out my pokedex).

[starblightbindery]

Editor's Note from The Black Sands of Socorro by Patricia A. Jackson

While researching Patricia A. Jackson’s entire body of Star Wars work for a short story anthology, I came across the West End Games sourcebook Star Wars: The Black Sands of Socorro (1997.) It’s a crucial work of Star Wars ephemera: The first creator of color writing for Star Wars in an official capacity, writing not just about individual characters of color, but centering entire cultures populated by non-white characters. A young Black woman in the 1990s wrote science fiction for Star Wars, worldbuilding with concepts like antislavery, indigeneity, linguistic divergence, and settler colonialism...while Disney-Lucasfilm in the 2020s ineffectually positions Star Wars as a post-racial fantasy.

I non-hyperbolically refer to Patricia A. Jackson as the “Octavia Butler of Star Wars,” not because fans of color need to be officially sanctioned by Lucasfilm to create Star Wars content, but because of how difficult it is to carve out anti-racist space in a transmedia storytelling empire. Challenging even in transformational fandom spaces (e.g. fan works), to broach race in affirmational fandom spaces—or while writing content for the property holder—is to be unflinchingly subversive.

And Jackson did it first. In an interview with Rob Wolf in 2022, Jackson described her experience writing race into Star Wars in the 1990s as an “experiment.” The planet, peoples, and cultures of Socorro were a way for Jackson to obliquely, yet concretely, center Blackness and racial justice into Star Wars, pushing the racial allegory constrained by the original trilogy to its limits.

Since it’s inception, Star Wars has spent much of it’s storytelling on the fringes of the galaxy (whether it’s Tatooine or Jakku, Nevarro or Ajan Kloss.) The Black Sands of Socorro is an extension of that trope, but where the Star Wars films used indigeneity as set dressing (eg. “Sand People”, Ewoks, Gungans, etc.) Jackson creates a vivid world where indigenous culture and settler colonists collide; where characters are coded with dark skin and central to the action. The planet Socorro is distinct as a Star Wars setting. As one of the only places in the galaxy where slavery is eradicated with a vengeance, Socorro refuses to let go of a plot line Star Wars media often leaves behind. Socorro is a haven from Imperial fascism, a space where readers are invited to imagine a story that does not center around occupation.

When I learned that Patricia A. Jackson no longer has a physical copy of The Black Sands of Socorro, I realized that I had the materials and the means to create a fanbound hard copy for her home library (well, and also for my own home library.) While this handmade book is not an exact reproduction of the RPG supplement, I hope my renvisioning of the supplement as an in-universe travel guide lives up to the original work.

As the idea of creating a travel guidebook based on the original material percolated, I reflected on the State of Race in Star Wars in the year since I compiled Designs of Fate, an anthology of my favorite Patricia A. Jackson short stories. In May 2022, actress Moses Ingram debuted as Inquisitor Reva Sevander, the deuteragonist in the Dinsey+ streaming Obi-Wan Kenobi series. As predicted by Lucasfilm—and any fan sick of alt-right Star Wars related “whitelash”—Ingram was promptly subjected to a firehose of racialized harassment and misogynoir.

Yep, fascist self-proclaimed fanboys complained about a Black woman Inquisitor in 2022, having no idea (or deliberately whitewashing) that one of creators of the entire freakin’ concept of Inquisitors was a Black woman writing for the Star Wars Adventure Journal three decades ago.

Then, a public facing Star Wars account (@StarWars on Twitter) broke precedent and slapped back at the trolls. Lead actor Ewan McGregor filmed a video retort, posted on @StarWars, stating “racism has no place in this world” and telling off the racist bullies: “you’re no Star Wars fan in my mind.” A few months later, Disney+ debuted it’s second flagship Star Wars streaming series of the year, starring a Latino actor as the protagonist. In the opening episode of Andor, a police chief describes Diego Luna’s eponymous lead as a “dark-featured human,” perhaps the closest the franchise has ever gotten to acknowledging out-of-universe constructions of race, to date. The series explored aspects of imperialism with more depth than Star Wars had previously done on screen, such as the Empire’s treatment of the native people of Aldhani. And, in November, the The Acolyte, a Disney+ series co-developed by Rayne Roberts, announced Amandla Stenberg and Korean actor Lee Jung-jae as its top-billed leads. Stenberg will be the first Gen Z, mixed race, Black, Inuit, queer, and non-binary actor to lead a major Star Wars series.

On the Patricia A. Jackson Star Wars front, in 2022, Jackson’s character Fable Astin was an easter egg in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series. Jackson will again write for Star Wars in an official capacity in From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi, due for publication in Fall 2023. A series about Lando Calrissian, the galaxy’s most famous Socorran, is still in production, so I have my fingers crossed that we may soon see Socorro on camera.

I wonder if this past year will have been a fulcrum year for BIPOC fandom. Maybe Disney has finally realized it’s bad for business that the alt-right uses social media algorithms and Star Wars fan spaces as a soft recruiting ground to radicalize young white men? Maybe Star Wars as a franchise will continue to loudly disavow fan whitelash and firmly position performers of color in true leading roles? I really hope so. On the other hand, as much as I am in favor of increased representation in Star Wars storytelling, I am also troubled by Disney-Lucasfilm’s framing of the Galaxy Far, Far Away (GFFA) as “colorblind.” Recently, Star Wars fans have been asked to accept that in the (a long time ago) sci-fi futurepast GFFA, humans have always been post-racial, and it’s just a coincidence that racialized people were not caught on camera the way white characters have been for years. The galaxy is post-racial and it’s just acoincidence that the movers and shakers of the galaxy have largely been depicted as white men for the past 40 years of media.

For example, in the decade since Disney rebooted the expanded universe, fans have learned that Star Wars’s biggest galactic war criminal to never be depicted on screen is Admiral Rae Sloane, a bisexual Black woman who was the leader of Imperial remnant forces, one of the architects of the First Order, and personal mentor to General Hux. Under Disney-Lucasfilm’s post-racial retcon of the Star Wars universe, the allegorical fascists are intersectional equal opportunity employers (at least in expanded universe content like animation, video games, and novels.) Along those lines, several of the franchise’s newly introduced, prominent women of color have been part of the Empire: Imperial loyalist Cienna Ree (Lost Stars), Inferno Squad leader Iden Versio (Star Wars: Battlefront II) former stormtrooper Jannah (Episode IX), First Order pilot Tamara Ryvora (Star Wars: Resistance), Inquisitor Trilla Sundari (Jedi: Fallen Order), Captain Terisa Kerrill (Star Wars: Squadron) and, most recently, Inquisitor Reva Sevander. Once the sole purview of stodgy, very white and very British men (demonstrably so even in the sequel trilogy movies,) now anyone can be a stooge of the Empire.

That’s not to say that marginalized people can’t collude with fascism, or that there haven’t been heroic characters of color introduced in recent years. Rather, I posit that in order to sell audiences on the post-racial/colorblind GFFA, fascist-of-color characters like Rae Sloane or Giancarlo Esposito’s Moff Gideon (The Mandalorian) are created by necessity. The franchise wants to at once be racially inclusive and yet never directly address race. In Star Wars, real world oppression is primarily explored through allegory—such as Solo (2018)’s bit on droid rights, the clone army, or the myriad of non-human alien bodies that nonetheless are coded with racial stereotypes. A lot has been said about how allegory in sci-fi allows audiences to grapple with inequality from a comfortable distance, and not enough has been said about which audience is being prioritized for comfort.

What does it mean when race is supposedly a non-issue for humans in the GFFA, but creators and actors with marginalized identities cannot participate in Star Wars in any capacity without experiencing identity-targeted harassment? In the past ten years, this has been true even for white women like Kathleen Kennedy and Daisy Ridley, but the vitriol has been most strongly directed towards Black women like Lucasfilm Story Group lead Kiri Hart, author Justina Ireland and The High Republic Show host Krystina Arielle. Can the Galaxy Far, Far Away truly be “colorblind” or “post-racial” (never-racial?) if the narrative continually centers white characters and replicates all the common racial inequities seen in commercialized Hollywood storytelling? Upon the release of The Force Awakens in 2015, critic Andre Seewood aptly described Finn’s positioning in the story as “hyper-⁠tokenism,” even presciently predicting that Finn would continue to be hyper-⁠tokenized in Episodes VIII and IX. As the narrative veered away from Finn, it also left unrealized a stormtrooper rebellion plot line where Finn could have been, in effect, a Black abolitionist. Actor John Boyega’s critique of his experience in the sequel trilogy aligns with Seewald’s assessment: “Do not bring out a Black character, market them to be much more important to the franchise than they are and then have them pushed to the side.”

Published in 1997, The Black Sands of Socorro came before Finn, before Mace Windu, back when all the melanin of Star Wars could be found in Billy Dee Williams’s singular swagger and James Earl Jones’s distinctive voice. Back then, the most prominent Black actress in the original trilogy was dancer Femi Taylor, who played Oola, the hypersexualized green twi’lek fed to the rancor in Return of the Jedi. Bantam Spectra, the publisher that held the license for Star Wars from 1991 to 1999, had no leading characters of color in its’ Expanded Universe. The first full length Star Wars novel by a writer of color, Steven Barnes’s The Cestus Deception15, would not be published until 2004. Even though the book featured two protagonists of color, they would not be depicted on the cover. At Comic-Con in 2010, I spoke with Tom Taylor, a white Australian comic book writer who tried to make the lead family in Star Wars: Invasion (2009) a Black one, but was shut down during the creative process. The comic instead depicts a family of blondes, because the publishers did not think fans would embrace leads of color. All this to say, the inclusion of melanated characters in Star Wars has been so, so hard fought. It’s incredible The Black Sands of Socorro exists at all. It’s more than worthy of celebration, and I’m floored that more attention has not been brought to it.

Patricia A. Jackson is a smuggler.

This sourcebook was explicitly written to assist fans in telling their own Star Wars stories, and in it Patricia A. Jackson smuggled in emphatic allusions to the Black Panther movement and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, smuggled in commentary on indigeneity and settler colonialism, and smuggled in multiple ways for fans to envision characters of color. Her writing has consistently added richness to the GFFA, and in The Black Sands of Socorro she envisions multiple histories for multiple cultures coded as non-white. She ensured the existence of not mere tokens, but flourishing societies of people of color in Star Wars.

The coda for The Last Jedi again shows how perilously close to tokenization characters of color, particularly Black characters, are in modern day Star Wars. In this film, the franchise returns to itsprevious exploration of slavery with the depiction of enslaved children on Canto Bight. The last speaking lines of the film are from Oniho Zaya (played by Josiah Oniha, a young Black British actor) who recounts Luke Skywalker’s heroic exploits to the other children. The film then closes out by showing that one of the downtrodden children is Force-sensitive—a future hero in the Star Wars mythos. In a film where every single Force-user depicted is white, the next generation kid with the potential is, again, a young white boy. Once again, the Black character can only serve the narrative in a supporting role. A franchise depicting a colorblind fantasy continually reifies racial and gender hierarchies in America. With The Acolyte, scheduled for release in 2024, it’s possible the franchise may finally be shifting past hyper-tokenism. In the meantime, fans of color and our erstwhile allies will continue doodling in the margins.

In the end, the sequel trilogy left the Canto Bight plot line (and the overarching slavery plot line started in Episode I) unresolved. I’d like to think the Black Bha’lir strafed Canto Bight and grabbed those kids. It seems like something they would do. Out among the stars, Oniho Zaya is adventuring with Drake Paulsen, and his story does not bracket another characters’; he is central. The Black Sands of Socorro is a launching pad for stories like that. It represents how fans of color have always carved out pieces of Star Wars for ourselves.