#as in she has something stellan wants. she knows elzar in a way stellan never will

[bikananjarrus]

no but, stellan said he was jealous. he was wary of the closeness, the intimacy, of elzar and avar’s relationship—not bc he was trying to stick to the rules, but because he was JEALOUS. and he was looking at elzar in a way he hadn’t for a long time when he said that!! do u understand!! he said that in their constellation of three, elzar and avar always shone brighter, were always closer together! and even though elzar assured him that he is their polestar—their guide—stellan believes he will always be separate. a part of the whole, but always apart from them. he wants what he can’t have and he’s in love with elzar!! like you understand yes?? he said he was jealous and he’s in love he’s in love he’s in love—

[hurricanek8art]

I had to start trying to explain to my mom (strictly a movie/tv fan) why the Jedi are like this at this point in time, and it finally clicked in my head. The perfect way to explain how they're so rigid and strict and have such huge sticks up their butts at this point in time.

The Jedi of this generation are the result of generational trauma.

(Spoilers for episodes 1 and 2 of The Acolyte, Phase One of the High Republic books, and some barebones setting spoilers of Phase Three under the cut. Also a big wall of text because I never know when to shut up 🙃)

So I'm behind on Phase III of the High Republic books (got a few chapters into The Eye of Darkness when it came out, brain farted out on me on reading ability, haven't gotten back to it yet 🙃😖) but I know enough to know that things are really going bad. The Nihil are rampaging, the Nameless are turning people to stone, the Stormwall has cut off like a third of the galaxy from the rest of it. It's a lot! It's really bad! And we see how it's affecting our heroes. Avar and Elzar are reeling without Stellan. Vern's questioning about how the Jedi are responding to this threat throughout Phase I has led her to become a Wayseeker. Padawans like Bell, Burry and Reath have been elevated to Knighthood a lot sooner than any of them expected to be. All of them are incredibly traumatized.

But that's just the Jedi we've seen. The heroes, the big names. Imagine being a nobody at this time. An extra. A child.

Imagine being a youngling in this era. There are literal nightmares hunting you. People are dying right and left, they're being husked and turned to stone or just plain shot/stabbed/whatever. The outposts are being closed down and everyone's being recalled to Coruscant, and that's the ones who've survived so far. They knocked the Starlight Beacon out of the sky, something that was supposed to be impossible. And less than five years ago, this was a golden age of peace, of light and life and great works that were bringing the galaxy together, a united front. That's horrible, that is terrifying.

We as the readers know it's going to work out, because it has to, because this is a prequel. They don't know that. They're just kids, and the world has suddenly turned upside-down, and the galaxy is big and scary and dark.

So everything works out, the day is saved. But these kids, they have to live with this trauma for the rest of their lives.

And when they grow up, and they train Padawans, those Padawans are going to carry the lessons they learned onwards. There is no lesson a Master can teach in this era that isn't going to carry the grief of the Nihil or the Nameless. There is no lesson any Master will ever teach again, from the moment Loden Greatstorm was captured by Marchion Ro all the way to Luke's temple burning to the ground, that won't somehow, in some way, be touched by this. It haunts everyone, everything. Those lessons are passed on, and on, and on.

Yord Fandar is intense about protocal and following the rules and making sure he's the perfect Jedi, because a hundred years ago maverick Elzar Mann played fast and loose with the rules while he was stationed on Valo, and then the Nihil turned the Republic Fair into a bloodbath. Sol is worried about Osha's (so far) inability to put her grief to the side and remain objective in chasing Mae because Imri Cantaros lost control and nearly murdered the Nihil who caused the death of his master during the Great Disaster. Vernestra Rwoh is refusing to charge into this without talking it over with the Council because she remembers what happened when she kept information from them a hundred years ago.

These aren't isolated incidents because they happened to the heroes, every Jedi of that era has some story like this, where the lines blurred in the fog of war and they made or nearly made horrible mistakes out of fear. And now, every Jedi is going to want to rise above that. To not make those mistakes, because that past is past. It's peaceful again. They're better now. But that trauma's lurking under the surface, just like the Sith. The Nihil won't win, but the Order isn't going to, either. Because what the Nihil did changed them, permanently.

The plot of the High Republic books is supposedly unrelated to the show, because it's a hundred years later. But the plot of the High Republic books explains everything about the Jedi in this era of the galaxy. They're carrying the trauma and grief of an entire generation that was brutalized unlike anything the Order had ever seen before.

And the Sith have watched, and waited, as that trauma has become so internalized, so central to what the Jedi are. The Jedi might not even realize that's what's happened to them. But the Sith see it.

And now it's finally time to begin the grand plan.