#obi wan is needling him and poking at him and making fun of him a little bit

[starlightandsunshine]

Genuinely baffling to me that in all of the discussions I've seen about Anakin and Ahsoka's first meeting and what his line about her being "a little young to be a padawan" and her reaction means for the worldbuilding that no one seems to have considered the possibility that he was just. Being kind of a dick.

He does not want her there. She is small and he finds her annoying and he didn't ask for a padawan anyway. And like. Sometimes people just look at children smaller than them who are being annoying and go "what are you ten?" to a teenager.

And Anakin became a padawan at nine so his perspective is definitely skewed because when he was a padawan all of the other padawans were bigger and older than him. Now, he's twenty and she looks tiny and his response is "no way was I that little she must be younger than I was" and to needle her about it.

[fallenrepublick]

Ma’am. I just discovered your work on accident and kriff I’m obsessed. If possible could you do something along the lines of Obi Wan being his flirty self in front of maul and making him super jealous? Sorry if that’s a lousy request 😅

Nah, that’s a great request! It turned into... something I wasn’t expecting it to turn into so let me know how you felt about this

Also I had no idea where this could fit in continuity-wise so I just created a situation that doesn’t exist, because I have zero (0) percent creativity

Warnings: None

The town square was particularly beautiful that morning, cobblestone pathways reflecting the sleek light of the noontime sun. With a small amount of time on your hands, you had wanted to while away a few hours by the large fountain that sat right in the middle. Book in hand, you sat yourself right at the edge of the water, periodical droplets poking at you like blunt embroidery needles to make sure you weren’t totally lost in the inky world in front of you. The time spent alone wasn’t to last, though.

An ill-defined silhouette slid over the pages you were open to, causing you to snap out of your trance and tilt your head up to your intruder. Your first thought was that Maul had managed to pull away from the endless piles of work that only seemed to grow bigger as he picked away at it. This was not the case.

Before you was a young man, reddish hair and beard covering angular features. Kenobi. His head was tilted and his arms crossed in front of him as if he were trying to see what it was you were so focused on.

“I haven’t had time to read much lately,” he began, coming to sit down beside you, light creamy robes draping off the stone edge. “It was mostly my master who enjoyed books, though I do appreciate a classic every so often.”

Oh boy.

The good news was, he clearly didn’t know who you were. “Actually, I haven’t been reading much lately either. I’ve been so busy…” You smiled at him, his blunt friendliness feeling nice after a while of being surrounded by less-than-friendly people.

He swung his arm behind him, leaning back onto it, but tilted just enough towards you that you noticed. “What might the book be about?”

“It’s a really old one.” Your voice perked up at his question, choosing to ignore his movement. “Mainly about centuries old wars, before Jedi or Sith or anything like that were really established. I’m sure a lot of it is embellishment, but the concepts are fascinating, and I think the timeline goes up to the Order’s eventual origin on Tython.”

He seemed surprised at your answer, as if he were expecting you to go on some tangent about fairy tales or romantic adventures. All of those things were exciting, no doubt, but it is also beneficial to know one’s history.

“And this is all of your own volition?” he asked, chuckling lightly. “You’re not being forced to study?”

“Trust me, if that were the case, I’d be locked up in my room sulking like a moody teenager.” You both laughed, the light mood brightening nearly everything you said. Though you knew he was technically an enemy, the way he spoke to you was nothing short of kindness, and it was a strange feeling that crept into you as you wondered if he might even be a friend.

Since the day was relatively peaceful, the two of you spent much more time than you had expected sharing stories and laughing at the worst situations you had found yourselves in.

“I told him, ‘Anakin, you must protect the senator with your life,’ and what does he do?”

You nodded sagely. “He gets them both captured.”

“He gets them both captured!” He was gesturing widely, surely letting out years of contained frustration and mild embarrassment. “We could have been eaten!”

“I’m sure that was a very fun conversation with the council,” you added, snickering.

His hand was on your shoulder, wide grin now diminished into a smirk. “It was, but I learned that day that there are many things the Council doesn’t need to know.”

Merely a few metres away, you heard someone clear their throat.

Oh. Nice.

Hesitantly, you turned your head. Maul stood in front of you, hands on his hips and brow furrowed, lips tightly pursed in annoyance.

“It’s been thirty minutes.”

You stood up immediately, smiling nervously, yet trying to make it look like you weren’t guilty. “Maul! Uh, how long have you been standing there?”

“For at least a quarter of it.”

“Hold on,” Obi-Wan said, standing up and filling the space between you and Maul. “You’re,” He pointed at you. “With him?” He pointed at Maul.

Maul rolled his eyes and spun around. “We’re leaving.”

Unsure of what to do, you turned to Kenobi, mumbled a quick “Sorry…” and rushed to catch up with Maul’s quickly diminishing figure.

People passed you by often, and though they paid no mind to you, you were terribly aware of them, keeping your voice low in case you accidentally caught their attention. “I think you think that was something it wasn’t…” you attempted, wishing it came out more eloquently than it did.

“I know exactly what that was,” he said, not bothering to look back down at you.

Taking a moment to think, you asked finally, “You’re not… jealous… are you?”

Hearing that, he pulled you into an empty alley. “Why would I be jealous?” he snapped, spinning around and glaring at you, clearly defensive. “What have I to be jealous of?”

You crossed your arms and leaned forward accusingly. “I know how you get. You always start getting pouty and upset when I talk to anyone who isn’t you.”

“Well, maybe I like being the person you want to talk to and not some Jedi.”

“I do talk to you. Besides, you know where my loyalties lie, right?”

He didn’t answer. His eyes narrowed instead as he stalked closer to you, backing you up against the cold wall of the building. “Perhaps… But I think that you need to be reminded.”

[the-call-from-the-light]

Love Has Blinded You: Cultural Disconnect, That Awkward Conversation Between Padmé and Anakin, and What It Might Mean for Rey and Ben

I’ve been thinking about this awkward scene from Revenge of the Sith lately, and reassessing its context.

ANAKIN: You are so… beautiful.

PADMÉ: It’s only because I’m so in love.

ANAKIN: No. No, it’s because I’m so in love with you.

PADMÉ: Then love has blinded you?

ANAKIN: Well… That’s not exactly what I meant.

PADMÉ: It’s probably true.

The scene as written and staged is cringe-inducing — but I’ve been thinking that its mixture of highly mannered staginess and artless befuddlement can be looked at as serving a purpose in understanding Anakin and Padmé — and why they never really could find the right balance as a couple, despite their attraction to one another. (Aside from the whole secret marriage thing.)

On the one side is Padmé, a sophisticated woman who was a freaking queen and is now a senator. On the other, Anakin Skywalker, a boy who grew up enslaved and then in a system where it was expected he would be celibate for life. Not only is Padmé more worldly, educated, and accomplished both in her sphere and in the wider galactic context than Anakin, she’s also five years older than he is and raised to be a leader. There’s an inherent imbalance there.

(That side eye!)

In the scene, Anakin is completely earnest — his wife is beautiful, and he wants to tell her that. But Padme’s response invites him into the banter of courtly love and flattery (which she probably grew up in), and he is at sea in that kind of conversation. You can see the teasing in her expressions, while Anakin flounders and is befuddled. They’re not speaking the same language.

This also could be true, a generation later, of Han and Leia. Their connection is passionate, but they come from completely different worlds — a pirate and a princess — and we see that, in the end, their relationship couldn’t survive its greatest trauma.

It’s as if some kind of Christian warrior hermit fell in love with Eleanor of Aquitaine — she coming straight from the chivalric troubadour court of her father’s traditions and he just out of a freezing abbey cell where he’d taken an oath of silence. It’s romantic, sure — but they’ll always be on unequal footing. Part of it is Anakin’s personality — he’s intense and earnest and has never learned the art of being playful in a deliberate, studied way — but part of it is that he is not a political animal. He doesn’t see a romantic relationship as a place for arch verbal games. (I had written “indeed any relationship or situation,” but I remembered his relationship with Ahsoka in The Clone Wars.)

Other Jedi, like Obi-Wan, who were more attuned to the Order’s political machinations, wouldn’t have had this problem, though.

Also, Obi-Wan is straight up a smooth playa

Unfortunately for Anakin (and maybe for his grandson), teasing as love and friendnship talk is big in Star Wars. Han is the standard bearer, of course — both with his romantic partner, Leia, and his life partner, Chewbacca. But there’s another example of teasing in a potential romantic relationship — that of Rey and Ben Solo. 

When Rey and Kylo Ren are Force-connected while Kylo is, as the Shakespeare adaptation of The Last Jedi puts it, “deshirted,” Rey asks if he has “a cowl or something” he can put on. This is teasing. She doesn’t ask if he has a shirt or merely “something” to put on. She says a cowl. She is poking fun at his oh so dark persona — saying she knows it is a mask supported by the standard accoutrements of darkness. By that point, their third Force connection, she also recognizes that his expression of his character is a performance. (As all of our expressions of our conception of ourselves are.)

I see that moment as a precursor to the bond they form — not just the Force bond, but the emotional one, the one that makes Kylo the person whom Rey most wants to speak to after her vision in the cave, the one that makes her reach her hand out to him. With that simple needling, he has begun to become human to her — she sees Ben Solo behind the mask of Kylo Ren.

Of course, in that moment, Kylo’s actions can be interpreted a variety of ways. Is he purposely not putting on a shirt to manipulate her? Is he just so intent on speaking to her that it doesn’t even register? Probably the latter, I think. You see in their second connection, when Rey is yelling invective at him and he asks, calmly, “Why is the Force connecting us?”, that he is approaching the connection with an air of almost academic detachment while she is meeting it with naked emotion.

A failure to speak the same language dooms Star Wars couples. Will it be different for Ben and Rey? There is that same disparity in their backgrounds — Ben is about ten years older than her, the privileged son of a mother who is former royalty and who was a powerful political force during his childhood. Rey is a scavenger. She comes from nothing, she is nothing, as Ben says.

And that bit of dialogue, even with Ben’s tearful, added “But not to me,” points to the trouble they will face in any future relationship. He was unresponsive to her attempt to level their statures with her teasing, and he further emphasizes their difference in status with his disastrous proposal after the Throne Room battle. They may be equal in power in the Force, but he reminds her — they are not equal as human beings; even if Rey had chosen to rule the galaxy with him, that rule would have been because of his decision to raise her from her station. And that kind of noblesse oblige is nothing to found a stable relationship on.