#because of obi wan

[tossawary]

This is petty fandom salt, BUT... I've been chewing on this phenomenon that I've been calling "Fandom's Darling". It is related to things like "Author's Darling" and "Mary Sue / Gary Stu" and "Protagonist Halo" and all that jazz, where one character gains a peculiar narrative weight in a story.

"Author's Darling" is when a writer has a favorite character, and the world and all other characters sort of get... warped to put the Darling in the spotlight. It's most noticeable in TV shows with multiple writers, when a character you personally like suddenly has their previous characterization destroyed to make another character look good somehow. Every other character might become weirdly incompetent. The Darling's feelings are treated as The Most Important Feelings in any given situation. The logic of the fictional world seems broken past suspension of disbelief in order to validate this one character's beliefs or skillset or some other fantasy. And so on.

"Fandom's Darling" is what I've been calling the pattern where a fandom essentially crowns a New Protagonist for their fanfiction stories (it's often a side character rather than the original protagonist, but it can also happen to protagonists). This character becomes the self-insert for all sorts of indulgent fantasies, gaining special powers or backstories, and/or becoming the focus of extreme whump, and/or hooking up with all the various hotties, starring in all sorts of tropey AUs, and so on. They're not always an obvious Mary Sue version of themselves, but the character's original personality and interpersonal relationships tend to get warped or dropped completely, and other characters tend to become a little flat around them. I call it "Fandom's Darling" because it's not just one self-indulgent fantasy fic (you do you! Have fun!) with characterization choices that I don't vibe with (I have neither the time nor the desire nor the authority to police anything, I am just venting), but rather a prolific mini-fandom of sorts revolving around this empty doll / fanon version of the chosen vessel character, so it becomes a little unavoidable.

I am salty about this (mildly frustrated) (imagine a soft sigh of disappointment before I just go do something else) because you are FUCKED if you actually liked the canonical version of this character and their interpersonal relationships. It's almost worse than liking an obscure character that no one cares about. There's about a thousand fics starring your fave, but maybe only about a dozen of them are actually rooted in any kind of recognisable canon.

[eightbitpale]

They ran a guy over :(

[bishicat]

drinkin' Jedi-style with some ~cerveza cristal~

[gert-the-disaster]

clone wars bird au that popped into me head during math class 😀👍

obi wan, satine, and a random clone

grievous and a battle droid

anakin and ahsoka

cool bonus characters under cut that im also proud of!

nala se and omega

barriss offee (i have no idea why i made her a cockatiel)

and finally, my wife governor pryce!

[galactic-rhea]

yikes.

I hope you're happy @squad-724 and @helloyesthisisdilophsaurus

[wlwanakin]

the thing is that palpatine was an absolutely integral central figure in anakin’s life for 36 fucking years, and for HALF OF HIS LIFE palpatine was literally the only person he had at all, and no one wants to delve into it and it makes me feel insane. like that is half his fucking life. more than half!!! palpatine was the most consistently present figure in anakin’s life for the fucking majority of it!!!! anakin loved him, anakin trusted him so deeply he could tell him things he felt like he couldn’t even tell padmé, anakin regarded him as a parental figure, anakin spent half his fucking life completely subservient to him to the most horrific degree, and people talk about the manipulation and call it grooming but it feels like very few are willing to acknowledge the emotional depth of the relationship on anakin’s end because it’s icky. every fix it au is just like “palpatine dies and everything is fine forever” and his constant looming presence is treated like a footnote or a generic mentorship or whatever but it’s not that!!! it’s actually so much worse than that!!!! like i need everyone to actually acknowledge the immense emotional weight this relationship has to anakin like PLEASE

[inky-axolotl]

Decided to redraw that one Obi Wan drawing I did- *checks time* 4 years ago! Happy to say I’ve grown a bit in the past 4 years art wise.

(2020 one here)

[jedi-starbird]

Palpatine: My boy, Master Kenobi is lying to you!

Anakin: ?...yeah? He does that? Lying is Obi-Wan's favourite sport. Bant told me that he was dropped on his head by Master Qui-Gon when he was a child and Master Qui-Gon was really tall, so the fall shook loose some things in his brain and now Obi-Wan is allergic to giving straight answers. It took me 3 years to figure out his favourite colour. and his birthday. 5 to figure out that he's allergic to shellfish. I once told a restaurant that Obi-Wan can't have shrimp and he told me to "stop giving information to the enemy". I've made a game of it really.

Palpatine: *muttering under his breath* ok try using shrimp next time

Anakin: what?

Palpatine: Nothing!

[mayhemspreadingguy]

Someone was sobbing. After a moment, Anakin realized Oh. That's me. And then his knees were buckling and he was heading for the ground. Obi-Wan caught him. "It's all right. I've got you." -K. Miller

[starwarjotta]

happy Valentine's Day my dears <3 you are all so very lovely

[brrmian]

they make me feel seen

[dontbelasagnax]

Sketches from 2022! Red page was my first time drawing Obi-Wan and Cody traditionally 🥰

[morgan-n-cheese-91]

old Obi-Wan is so funny to me because his sass and overall bitchiness is like the last thing he's got and I'm so proud it survived the great depression of his 40s.

[megamindsupremacy]

So like, y'all know that popular Star Wars fic trope of Time Traveling Obi-Wan Kenobi where he dies and then wakes up in his 11ish year old body back in the Jedi Temple? You know how usually he wakes up, has a few minutes/hours of confusion, and then goes about trying to act like he was at age 11 while slowly fixing everything wrong with the Jedi Order? Personally I think he would not do that.

I think that Ben "Lived As A Wizard Hermit For Two Decades On Tattooine, Left, And Then Died Immediately" Kenobi would wake up as an eleven-year-old, have a panic attack, attack the nearest adult Jedi while accusing them of Doing Weird Sith Shit To His Brain, fucking flee, only then realize he has time traveled, steal someone's ship, go flying out of the temple to god knows where, continue panicking, crash into a random moon while distracted, nearly die, build a survival camp out of his broken ass ship and eat whatever bugs he can find, get kidnapped by pirates, overthrow said pirates, steal their ship, and then very calmly return to the Jedi temple like nothing happened.

Then and only then do I think he would start trying to act like a normal human person (while also dodging questions such as "what the fuck was that" and "where were you" and "is that a pirate's ship?"), except he'd be bad at it due to having lived as an Insane Wizard Desert Hermit for the past twenty years who has experienced enough trauma and time that he doesn't super well remember the details of his childhood, what with all of the wars and death and wars and such.

His acting convinces nobody, but nobody is sure what exactly to do about All Of That so he's for the most part left alone (after very vehemently refusing sptherapy), all the way up until he catches a glimpse of palpatine out of the corner of his eye and then its On Sight

[ahhrenata]

goodbye mullet ✌🏻

[antianakin]

Headcanon that Cody actually thinks Obi-Wan is ten times more attractive in his Jedi clothing than he ever was in armor. He doesn't think Obi-Wan is UNATTRACTIVE as such when he's wearing more armor earlier in the war, but one day he sees Obi-Wan with either no armor or just the bracers and something just CLICKS and his jaw drops to the floor because YES, that's exactly how Obi-Wan should always look.

And bonus headcanon that he sees Obi-Wan in Mandalorian armor for whatever Reasons and immediately hates it and thinks it's probably the most unattractive Obi-Wan has ever looked. Obi-Wan finds this absolutely hilarious.