#meta: obiwan kenobi

[marvelstars]

Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon

"Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan disagree about using what one would call in mythological terms "the guide" . One believes in the guide, the other one doesn´t . When you are walking down the street and the are beggars on the street , one character takes the beggar along and the other one says "Why are you doing this, this is not a wise thing to do" The other one says "Yes but beggars can be useful to us" It´s a classic mythological motif but at the same time it´s conflict.

The characters have to grow so what happens is that eventually the character who is agaisn´t doing this has the obligation trasnferred to them.

In this case we have Qui-Gon, the mentor who takes on Anakin and the Padawan who thinks this is a bad idea so we have got a dynamic between these two Jedi, at the end of the film Obi-Wan takes on the obligation to train Anakin, one he can´t really fulfill because it´s over his head. His inability to train this kid properly turns Anakin into Darth Vader and drives the rest of the stories. Not only does he lets his mentor down but it plays into the collapse of the Republic. This is why he feels the obligation to try to rectify the situation with Luke.

George Lucas on Qui- Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi in STAR WARS ARCHIVES, the making of the phantom menace.

Obi-Wan truly wasn´t meant to be Anakin´s master not because Qui-Gon was a lot better but because he simply didn´t have the empathy to understand the kids needs at the age he started training him, he also thought he could train Anakin as well as other Jedi like Yoda but he was wrong because his perspective was wrong from the beggining.

He saw Anakin as a burden at first, then as someone dangerous because the Jedi Council believed him to be dangerous and later as an obligation but he didn´t see the value in Anakin as himself, separated from the chosen one prophecy or Qui-Gon´s promise so he could not train him as a master would to help him guide him towards a good development and this is the origin of Obi-Wan´s guilt towards Anakin´s fall to the darkside and later why he tries to correct this by sending Luke to train with Yoda so he would be able to kill his father.

I wish fandom could understand this part of Obi-Wan´s character because it´s an essential part of the story, ObiWan isn´t a bad jedi in fact he is one of the best but being good in something doesn´t mean you can be good teaching it which was the case with Obi-Wan.

In Anakin´s case he had a really strong foundation towards goodness from his mother but once he went to the Jedi Council and was rejected, he needed someone who could care for him in a way he understood this wasn´t the end of the world and that his value as a person wasn´t compromised for this rejection and the choice was his on how he would grow up like Shmi and Qui-Gon did but Obi-Wan could not be this for him because his faith in the jedi order is first and he would always take the council side over Anakin, be it when he was 9 or in later years, we also see him doing this with Ahsoka in the clone wars and imo this was why their relationship, while did grow and change and had real love, was going to end badly even without Palpatine´s grooming. Without Palpatine I see them growing distant unless they confronted the origin of their problems.

In short I believe Obi-Wan is someone who believes in the need of the many overcome the needs of the few while Qui-Gon/Shmi/Anakin when he trained Ahsoka are like: Attending, caring for the needs of the one can help us sustain the needs of the many, because if we just support the needs of the abstract many over the few real individuals we meet, we are going to end failing everybody.

[obsessivefreakandpartners]

We know it's canon that Anakin felt so lonely after killing Obi wan that even Yoda felt it from afar. What's also canon in my heart is that Anakin also felt extremely tired after killing Obi wan. He was already tired and he knew that, what he didn't know was that he could get even more tired. Lonely, heavy and depleted. He would go back and forth, from distant ( " all is empty inside) to grumpy ( " everyone, stop annoying me, you make me want to die and join him").

[kalak]

Ok but obiwan ended up enabling kid luke by being his guardian angel. Like imagine if you're a reckless kid who got into all sorts of trouble but you somehow got miraculously saved every single time. Like you fall off a cliff and black out but then suddenly you're safe back in your home. You pick a fight with a slaver and your ass is about to be whooped when suddenly the slaver trips and falls and hits his head. Add the teenage 'nothing can hurt me I am invincible' mindset and the 'tatooine is so boring that I'm going to strap a rocket booster to my speeder and see what happens' recklessness and you get a guy who don't give a shit. Like a guy who, when told about the force, decides to throw caution into the wind and trust in the force about everything. The you're going to die be afraid be afraid fear that emanates from darth vader and also palpatine means nothing to luke because he experienced that fear and survived x 100. Obiwan unknowingly fostered a 'whatever happens everything will turn out alright' kinda optimism in luke tbh.

[yiliy]

Despite Obi-Wan cutting Anakin down to size, that’s not how Obi-Wan wanted things to end. Gillard reveals that he designed the fight so that Obi-Wan was trying to wear out Anakin in order to calm him down and set things right.

“I did write [the fight choreography] like a husband and a wife having a fight. Anakin thinks Obi is maybe having an affair with Padme at that point, so he's already gone to the Dark Side. For Obi, it's about just trying to absorb it long enough that he can get him back,” Gillard said.

- IGN, interview with stunt coordinator/fight choreographer Nick Gillard 

[kenobihater]

i legit don't get the appeal of viewing a character you like as a "100% unproblematic fave". y'all realize that a character can both be staunchly good with many positive traits AND have some flaws as well, right? to me, viewing a moral yet multifaceted character as faultless is like baking a cake with no salt. yeah, it's sweet, but it's too sweet because there's no salt to elevate the flavor! where's the depth in a character that is entirely perfect? where's the compelling motivations and character work? where's the humanity in that?

thankfully, i don't see much of this complete denial of flaws in the popular fanon of characters i enjoy, but what i DO see frequently is a shift in focus from characters' overall negative behaviors - behaviors directed both at themself and towards others - to depicting their self-destructive behaviors as their sole flaws. self-destruction is viewed as an "acceptable" flaw, unlike causing harm to others, and is often exaggerated if not invented out of whole cloth!

for an example of this distortion: there's a heroic yet flawed character i like with a high stress position that he wholly dedicates himself to, who probably loses a bit of sleep and is seen asking for and drinking tea ONCE to buy some time. what's the fanon version of him seen in many fics? well, his missteps and occasional emotional insensitivity have gone entirely out the window, and he's been transformed into a workaholic, sleep-deprived, caffeine addict who is incapable of caring for himself. he WILL collapse at some point in order to justify his love interest swooping in and insisting that this character, a fully grown adult man in charge of 1/10th of the entire army, learns ✨the importance of self care✨

i'm not arguing for every character to be deeply flawed - i love a good hero - but by making a canonically flawed character either 1) entirely beyond reproach or 2) a self-neglectful and/or self-flagellating martyr who has never hurt anyone but themself, you're sucking the life RIGHT out of them, and boring me to tears in the process.

[dark--whisperings]

16 and 17 because I am a nosy bitch! :D

Response for this ask game!

😜😜😜

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16. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever used as a bookmark?

... my cell phone. LMAO. And then I promptly forgot where I put my phone, and spent a while looking for it.

Weirdly enough, I don't usually use a bookmark! I typically just memorize which page I'm on... chaotic, I know. I'm the definition of ✨chaos✨.

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17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

OOOOH I LOVE THIS ONE. Again, I'm going to talk about 'Suffocate Me (I'm Still Breathing)'. Originally, this was to be written as a one shot, intended to satisfy my craving for Obi-Wan Kenobi, the mess(TM). Because I love me an Obi-Wan that is a hot mess. However, the more I started writing it, the more I started leaning into a deeper exploration of the mind of an addict and someone struggling with an untreated mental illness. What was intended to be dark and gritty, became dark and gritty and real. It became less about the more emphatic depictions of mental health and addiction that you see in the media, and more focused on the subtleties of the experience, ones that often go unnoticed.

When I started following this train of thought with this fic, I was really focused on the experience of the Clone Wars, and Star Wars in general. In this universe, shit is majorly fucked up. Everyone knows it, but we don't really delve into how the characters are affected by the atrocities that they experience daily. Instead, war is glorified. And, I think this really reflects the kinds of thing that get swept under the rug and overlooked by those who aren't experiencing it.

Which is why I really wanted to focus on Obi-Wan, and his experience. Time and time again, he's been hit with terrible loss and experiences that will change him forever. But he's become a notable hero in the galaxy. And by nature, he's the type of man that refuses to seek help when he needs it. Not because he perceives others needing help as a weakness. No, he only sees himself needing support as something to be ashamed of, because he's started to view himself as a tool to bring about change in the galaxy. I firmly believe that by the time the Clone Wars really started to ramp up, that he lost his sense of self, which leads him down a really dark path, one he walks alone.

So we have this struggling man, desperately wishing someone would notice what's going on, because he's learned that he can't verbalize this himself. Pair that with everyone else having put him on a pedestal, because acknowledging that their hero-like figure needs help means they have to acknowledge the fallacies of their own realities and perspectives... it's kind of the perfect storm.

All in all, I just really wanted to explore the silent struggle that many people fight on a daily basis, in contrast with a more overt struggle (that someone like Anakin experiences, for example).

*takes a breath*

Wow, that was a rambling stream of thought. 😅😅😅

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Keep 'em coming!

[thegingerwrites]

I saw a post about the “you didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker. I did” line and how with it, Anakin is putting the final nail in his own coffin and I absolutely love that interpretation (which is why this is its own post and not a reply) but this post also talked about that line freeing obi-wan from guilt or responsibility for Anakin falling

And maybe it’s comforting to think of that line that way, that Obi-wan gets some kind of absolution or forgiveness for what happened on Mustafar. It also does a great job of giving Anakin some agency in choosing to fall to the dark side and to kill that version of himself.

But I don’t think that this line gives obi-wan comfort or freedom from guilt for a moment.

Whether true or not, honest or not, I think it’s very likely he still feels complicit in the ‘murder’ of his best friend and brother in arms. I don’t know if the guilt of not knowing that all of that anger and distrust was there built up and poisoning him can ever really go away.

Obi-wan is absolved of the physical murder, hacking off Anakin’s limbs and leaving him on Mustafar but he was also there when Anakin’s real death happened, like he was standing there while he bled out not knowing Anakin was even cut.

I don’t think there’s any freedom for Obi-wan in that.

[marvelstars]

Anakin and Paternity

One of the most interesting aspects of Star Wars is the relationship between children and parents, this is the case of Anakin and Luke, the main protagonists of the story, so I wanted to explore the paternity relationships and the idea of parenthood from Anakin´s perspective.

Anakin Skywalker:

Anakin had three father figures during the saga as he didn´t have a biological father and neither was he adopted. What´s interesting about him is that all his father figures were scheming and often used a double discourse while talking to him and other people.

Qui-Gon Jinn:

Qui-Gon relationship with Ani was warm with Anakin and Shmi, he inmediately starts teaching the Jedi perspective to Anakin and it´s Shmi who notices he wants something more of him so she tells him about his birth, wishing for him to be able to free Anakin, she didn´t expect him to try to free her and he never offered.

Qui-Gon inmediately supported Anakin´s idea of risking his life to get them the tools they needed to escape Tatootine because it was a quick way to get them but also he wanted to explore Anakin´s potential in the force. If he was as force sensitive as his exams showed then he would not die during the race just like he didn´t die in other occasions.

Then Qui-Gon tried to free both Anakin and his mother but after Watto refused, he used the force to free only Anakin and later he tells Anakin he is free but they have to leave his mother behind because he could not free both of them, something which is true but also convenient because Anakin was supposed to leave his mother behind if he wanted to join the Jedi Order.

Shmi wants her Son to be free so she helps convince him to go and leave.

So Anakin´s initial father figure is someone warm, has a Jedi perspective of life but also is someone who quite literally abandoned his mother to slavery and died.

The general feeling Anakin feels towards Qui-Gon is warm but also abandonment.

Obi-Wan Kenobi:

Anakin´s initial meeting with Obi-Wan was a cordial but distant one, both of them saw Qui-Gon as their father figure.

Obi-Wan thought Qui-Gon´s idea of brining Anakin to the temple was incorrect as he was too old and he also saw Anakin as someone dangerous with a dark future when the Council mentioned Anakin´s feelings for his mother could lead him towards the darkside. Qui-Gon answered Anakin´s future was uncertain, not dangerous, which was true. Anakin was just a kid, a very kind hearted one, who showed he also had heroic qualities and Jedi qualities as well given he wanted to do good for other people and the galaxy but he still needed to grow up.

Anakin listened to Obi-Wan´s and Qui-Gon discussion and feel the need to apologize for bothering them and becoming a problem, a 9 year old apologized to two adults for not being what the Jedi Council expected him to be. Qui-Gon told him he wasn´t a problem and to stay close to him to be safe, Obi-Wan didn´t told him anything.

When Qui-Gon died, Obi-Wan took the responsibility of becoming Anakin´s master but he did so out of duty and love for his master, Anakin´s initial relationship went from a short tension between him and Obi-Wan for Qui-Gon ´s attention, to knowing Obi-Wan considered him dangerous to him taking charge of him out of duty.

He no longer had his mother so he didn´t have anyone in the Order who cared for him as family and his needs espefically, what he had was duty, a role to play as the Order´s chosen one and the heart ache and guilt for abandoning his mother to slavery.

Anakin and Obi-Wan grew close during the next 10 years of training and there´s a feeling of brotherhood between them, still Obi-Wan oftens softens his good feelings towards Anakin with constant criticism, which makes Anakin believe he will never get Obi-Wan´s praise for something he did. His relationship with the other members of the Order is distant and cordial, he is no longer as social as he was as a kid and his wish to help the galaxy was shifted towards doing his duty for the Order.

When Anakin started having dreams of his mother being tortured he told Obi-Wan, who only answered dreams pass in time and that Anakin had a responsibility to the Order, which means even if what he saw was real he had to forget about it and focus on serving the Order. So once again the need to prove his worth to the Jedi was more important than worry about family and even worse, love for his mother is once again seen as an attachment, not as love.

Shmi dies after weeks of being tortured, Anakin kills the Tusken Raiders responsible for her death but doesn´t tell Obi-Wan anything and later marries Padme. Anakin feels resentment and guilt towards his violent actions, he admits he failed as a Jedi but he also feels resenment towards the Order and also towards Obi-Wan for keeping him from rescuing her from her death and from slavery, he no longer trust them to care for him as a person or for his loved ones. He admires and appreciates Obi-Wan as his master but no longer trusts him to care for Anakin in a personal way.

His view of the Jedi Order code is no longer duty but resentment because it led the death and suffering of innocents and justifies the abandonmnet of loved ones, like his mother.

Obi-Wan and Anakin get close once again during the war but Obi-Wan for fear of getting attachted to Anakin never tells him about his warm, brotherhood feelings towards him, Anakin no longer trust Obi-Wan personally but cares about him as his father figure. Anakin loves him, protects him, doesn´t want to see him die but he lies to him about his marriage because he can´t trust him with Padme just as he could not trust him with his mother.

During the Rako Hardeen event, Obi-Wan used Anakin´s feelings of love towards him to sell a strategy by apparently dying in front of him and Ahsoka selling Anakin´s grief to the separatist so he could take another identity. This sends the signal to Anakin that his feelings are something that can and should be used agaisn´t him as a war strategy if he is incapable of managing his attachments as the Jedi want him to do. He also is told by Yoda they still see him as someone dangeous to allies and foes and that´s why they don´t trust him but are still willing to use him(this goes unsaid).

In the end after Anakin´s falls to the darkside and attacks the Jedi Temple, Obi-Wan is send to kill him, Anakin and Obi-Wan fight, Obi-Wan cuts off his limbs and leaves him to die on Mustafar. There´s a short moment in which Anakin asks Obi-Wan for help which is non verbal, Obi-Wan tells him he loved him but that he failed in his duty as the chosen one and leaves his to his fate.

So Anakin final feelings towards Obi-Wan is uncertainity, brotherhood, warm, criticism, failure, the idea that duty is more important than family or love, he will never be enough, coldness and abandonenment. His father left him to die.

Post ROTJ Obi-Wan teaches Anakin how to become a force ghost and while Anakin apologizes to his old master for his actions he doesn´t accept Obi-Wan´s offer until Obi-Wan admits he isn´t doing this just because he fulfilled the prophecy but because Obi-Wan forviges him and sees him once again as his friend.

Palpatine: The most toxic of Anakin´s parents.

Palpatine made a rapport with child Anakin with the intention of making him his slave/apprentice and his main enforcer. He made sure to make Anakin trust him and noticing Obi-Wan´s lack of praise made sure to praise him often but also added comments about Anakin leaving his mother behind to inspire in him feelings of guilt and shame as well as resentment on the Jedi Order and his master Obi-Wan. Psycological warfare at its finest for 13 years. Palpatine´s goal is to make Anakin have breakdowns, commit a crime he can´t come back from and be there to put him back together when no one will want him anymore, chaining him to himself.

After Anakin´s kills the Tuskens he is only capable of trusting Padme with the secret and Palpatine, he makes sure to keep Anakin´s secret but also shares with him the idea that he should not feel ashamed about it given what they did to his mother.

Anakin becomes dependant on Palpatine as his confidant because he feels there´s no one else he can come to to tell what he truly thinks, Anakin´s admires Palpatine as a leader and believes he is someone who truly cares for the galaxy and for him. When Palpatine shows his true face Anakin turns on him at the beggining but later hopes to learn from him the secret to save his wife from death and believes he could be taken to trial. When Mace tried to kill Palpatine Anakin turned on him and the Jedi Order.

Palpatine is the one to rescue Anakin from Mustafar and puts him in his suit, Anakin feels guilt for what he did but he can´t undo it, he is now trapped in the system of the Empire, Palpatine controls not only his life and duties but also his body using the suit he still praises him when he follows his orders but often is physically/psycologically abusive.

Palpatine´s relationship with Anakin is ultimately controlling,abusive, toxic and codependent one.

So Vader shows many of this characteristics when he finds Luke, he is controlling but unlike Palpatine he is controlling because he believes is the only way to protect Luke, he plans of keeping him safe by turning him into carbonite.

He also talks about duty, he says to Luke only them together can do something to lead the galaxy and stop the civil war between the rebellion and the empire and makes it look as it´s all that matters to him when he also wants them to be family.

In the end when Luke rejects both of these postions, Vader lets him go, not just he lets him escape Bespin but he also expects Luke to make his own choices and gets ready to fight him and die because he knows his master wants Luke as his apprentice and given he doesn´t want to kill his Son or Palpatine to kill his Son, he realizes he is going to have to make Luke fall to the darkside to save his life as he promised his master. His master/father ends killing Vader using lightning in self defense.

In the end Vader sacrifices his life to save Luke´s life from his master after Luke rejects the darkside and refuses to kill him. Vader as his mother before him is ready to die but makes sure Luke knows he truly loves him and regrets not been able to share more of his life or been an actual father to him.

Conclusion:

Anakin in short absorbed a truly complicated and harsh relationship with double meanings with his father figures, he didn´t get from any of them the unconditional love children need to feel from their parents for a healthy development, rather his relationship with them was always conditional by duty or by what he could do for them, this made him believe no one besides his mother or Padme could love him for himself and he needed to gain love with acts of duty or loyalty and two of his father figures were responsible his two deaths, the spiritual and physical one. So even service and duty wasn´t enough to get their love and acceptance.

So my guess is that while he certainly learned from them pov of Jedi and Sith perspective and duty from his father figures, as a parent/father figure to Ahsoka and later to Luke he prefered to act as his mother did with him, with unconditional love, acts of service, self sacrifice and clarity in his meaning when he wasn´t affected by the darkside in which case he showed what he learned from his fathers, controlling tendencies, scheming, lack of care and coldness which he also showed to both of them and Leia.

I believe it´s interesting the way Anakin´s father figures shaped his perception of himself and the way he related to others and to his children but it was ultimately his mother love the one who inspired him to get back to the light, be as much of a parent as the circunstances allowed him to be, have compassion again and sacrifice himself out of love, just like he did when he was a child, coming full circle.

[tennessoui]

Would you ever be willing to write an Obi-wan + clones fic? It can be platonic but I just love the idea of the clones (Cody, Rex, Waxer, Boil, Woolley, Ghost, etc) being protective over Obi-Wan and Obi-Wan fighting the hardest for them legally, physically, making sure they know their worth and proving it to them with his actions. Ask I’m obsessed with the found family trope.

haha it would very much have to be platonic given that I am absolutely not the writer to ask for anything romantic between obi-wan and anyone that isn’t that one guy

but as far as clone fic goes, im really not sure if I even could write a fic where the focus is on obi-wan’s relationship with the clones. I sorta never really um actually watched all of the clone wars so 🤷‍♀️

But I think a lot of my fics have that dynamic in the background!! “but a number” features a ton of clone and general Kenobi & skywalker bonding and shenanigans, and “building a boat with no blueprints” features soooo much found family dynamics between the clones and obi-wan and baby anakin

it’s less of a dynamic im interested in if I’m being honest even though I love found family vibes. it’s just that there’s a lot of fic/meta I’ve seen that made the rest of the Jedi out to be uncaring about their clones or the bad guys in order to sort of uplift or highlight obi-wan’s relationship with his troops, which I don’t think is really fair cause the parts of the clone wars I HAVE seen don’t give me the impression that obiwan was the one decent guy who cared about the clones while the rest just treated them like slaves or droids or something - all the Jedi cared as far as I’m aware and as far as I care

[mis-mcgifsten]

He's as dim as a penny candle quite frankly. And the idea of Anakin, grossly immature and unbalanced obsessive of Padme as he is, actually thinking he has any useful or desirable advice to impart? It's utterly hilarious.

anakin realizing that cody and obiwan are into eachother, and gloating about it because FINALLY he knows more than obiwan, he figured them out, already starts planning the best way to hold that high ground over his masters head-

and then obiwan tell him that he's been dating cody for like 2 years

[tsnbrainrot]

hashtag hayden confirmed

[sailor-hufflepuff]

No wonder Leia was so chill at the beginning of A New Hope; first of all, she’s an old hat at imperial interrogations. Second, she absolutely knew Ben Kenobi would come for her.

[essie007]

#I’m so glad I’m not the only one who sees this song as Obi wan and Anakin coded oh my god#they’re each other’s proudest friend and worst most devastating disaster and it’s heartbreaking OUGH#sw feels#help I’m getting pulled back into my prequels feelings again#time to cry about Obi wan and Anakin 😭😭#anakiiin#obi wan kenobi#my tears ricochet#also holy shit are some of these clips from new content because . I have not seen some of this and that older Obi wan is heartbreaking 😭#if these are from the Kenobi show I ABSOLUTELY need to watch that#anyways. been thinking about how them coded this song is so glad to find this#I mean glad as in this is so well done and so sad LOL

Thank you for all the nice words! @steel-wings look at the nice things someone has said about our vid!

You are definitely not the only one who thinks this song is just so them. Immediately after folklore came out I made a long tongue in cheek meta post about how my tears ricochet was clearly about Obi-wan and Anakin. I wanted to make the fanvid immediately but didn't have enough footage until the Obi-Wan show came out.

Speaking of, yes a lot of the footage is from the Obi-wan show and you should absolutely 100% definitely watch it if you are a fan of Obi-Wan or Anakin and Obi-Wan's relationship. It is So Good! I don't know what people who don't like it are talking about. Clearly they're just not appreciating Obiwan Kenobi's sadness and Darth Vader's whole deal like I am. It's definitely my favorite Star Wars thing Disney+ has put out. No contest. Other footage in this vid that you may or may not have recognized comes from Rogue One and the Clone Wars.

“You had to kill me but it killed you just the same.”

Vid Co-Created by: @steel-wings and @essie007 Song: my tears ricochet by Taylor Swift Fandom: Star Wars Pairing: Obikin

[jebiknights]

Anakin (and Anakin as Vader) is just a much more interesting character if you acknowledge that he goes from "the ends do not justify the means" to "the ends dont justify the means but we have no other real choice" to "the ends most assuredly justify the means" as vader. Much crunchier that way.

[justjettithings]

I am just so in love with how the Obi-wan series depicts and reaffirms Jedi morals. The Jedi live in a way where they aim to serve others over themselves. Even though Obi wants guilt was centered around Anakin, it was ultimately more about how Obi wan himself. He felt he had let Anakin down, he felt it was his fault (not Anakin who, ya know, actually did the order 66ing) that the Jedi order fell. Through interacting with the path and discovering not only the existence of other force sensitive and Jedi survivors, but discovering that non-force sensitives are the ones helping them, he realizes holding onto his guilt isn’t helping anyone. Because there’s nothing he can do to change the past, the only thing he can do is try to fix what’s happening in the present. Because as long as there’s still hope, as long as there’s still people trying to help, there will be Jedi.