#sith

[dathomirdumpsterfire]

i would like to add that he committed mass murder... while naked except for the collar and cuffs.

rained all day today

[crim-bat]

Star Wars Rant: The Jedi Dogma Lie You Fell For

The older I get and the more of a movie centric perspective I take in star wars (books and comics and games are good, but they either tell stories that aren't relevant or fill in the gaps), the more I've come to believe that the writers lacked the media literacy as much as the fans in regards to how dogmatic the jedi actually were

Palpatine said the order had a narrow and dogmatic view of the force once and the fanbase and writers immediately went "YEAH HE WAS RIGHT" without understanding what was going on and 20 years of telephone later it's become accepted as fact so much that it's permanently poisoned the well.

In the prequel trilogy list of things "explaining" jedi dogma, we have...

The jedi did not want to train Anakin as he was a ball of Trauma. This is fair when your magic system runs on being able to not need let your emotions control you. Anakin needed help, not jedi training.

The jedi not believing Qui Gon when he said there was a sith afoot. The sith have been gone for a thousand years, or so they think. That, enough, is reason to not be sure about it. In the EU/Legends, Dark Jedi cropped up every couple of years so it could have easily been one of those instead. One of them was Qui's former student. AND the jedi didn't just say "that's not a problem, ignore it". They very pointedly say to go investigate the problem. And Qui is good enough at his job that they kept him on the case

The jedi don't allow marriage. It's a monastic order and they are free to leave. There is literally no penalty for just bouncing as long as you don't burn the bridges yourself

In AOTC, we see Obi Wan being especially down on Anakin the whole movie and the other jedi in the scenes, Mace and Yoda, express concern and try to defend Anakin from his own master. Genuinely, Obi Wan is the bigger problem here than any other jedi. He's my favorite, but he's an asshole in AOTC

On Dooku, Mace doesn't think Dooku would do assassination because that is, at that time, super out of how the jedi operate. Dooku was a jedi so it should not have been in his character.

In Revenge of the Sith, Anakin goes to Yoda for advise about Padme but is vague as fuck so he gets vague jedi advise about detaching yourself from the situation and being happy they're going to jedi heaven. He Cannot Give Better Advise because Anakin is being Anakin.

Same movie, Mace says he doesn't trust Anakin with spying on Palpatine because he doesn't think he can handle it. And Anakin is only treated like a shitheal in the film when he acts like one. Yes, there's the undercurrent of him trying to save Padme but the movie doesn't at all explain that he's trying to get into the archives. No one can help him because he's not letting them.

Same movie, Palpatine points out the Dogmatic and Narrow view of the jedi according to the force.

There is really no part of the prequels that doesn't make sense and doesn't exonerate the "dogma" of the jedi in some way unless you're looking at what writers did after the fact.

Do the jedi have issues within the films?

Yes

Are they too beholden to the state?

Probably

But those are different issues and the official writers and the fans have both permanently poisoned the well because they took the big bad of 9 films at face value without criticism

[artist-issues]

Who is your favorite character from each Star Wars trilogy and why? One character from the prequel trilogy, one from the original trilogy, and one from the sequel trilogy. ✨

Okay so:

PREQUELS: Anakin Skywalker

I know it’s basic but he’s the best character.

The whole thing he’s prophesied to do is “bring balance to the Force.” And I think everybody like, tries to interpret what that means, as if it’s some big mystery, but if you just look at his character, it’s perfectly spelled out.

In Anakin’s time, the Jedi rejected attachment. The Sith rejected faith. Both are because of a fear of a lack of control (from two different directions.)

The Force is out of balance because Light wants to have abandonment of passion and call it peace, and the Dark wants to have all passion without selflessness. Both are faithless, in their own way.

And Anakin comes in and he’s like a mini-object lesson for that same problem. Except, before he falls to the Dark Side, Anakin is the only one with the potential to have both. He has attachments and passion, but he also wants peace. He (correctly) wants his attachments to be the “why” behind his power.

(I know everybody calls this concept “grey Jedi,” but I think that’s unnecessary and categorizing it sort of ruins the nuance in an otherwise really-nuanceless-straightforward franchise. Ironically.)

Anyway. Anakin is a great character because he has all these seemingly-contradictory traits warring inside of him. He’s the most powerful Jedi who ever lived, but he’s the most vulnerable emotionally. He’s a gifted strategist but he’s personally impulsive. He came from slavery and hates being told what to do, but he thinks that people who won’t submit to a peaceful regime should be forced to. He’s cocky enough to try any hare-brained scheme with zero experience, but he’s insecure enough to always have to prove something to the Jedi Council and even the woman he loves. He likes everything to be simple, black-and-white, and extreme, with nobody handing down complicated caveats or restrictive orders—but he falls in love with a ruler who’s also a politician. Fate has assured everyone that he is the Chosen One, but his allies still generally never really know what to expect from him. He’s fiercely loyal and won’t leave Obi Wan or Padme to die because of his attachments during the war, but those same attachments are what ultimately cause him to betray and attempt to murder those same two people.

All these contradictory traits create an intensely interesting character—and the perfect character for a story like Star Wars, the perfect character where “BALANCE BETWEEN TWO THINGS” is the main symbolism.

Also all of Star Wars is about the Main Point: Faith Triumphs Over Fear.

Anakin’s biggest, hardest problem was that he only ever had faith in himself, his own ability to make everything turn out all right. And the fear that he wasn’t enough, and if he wasn’t enough then therefore nothing would be all right, caused him to fall. He just had to have more power because more power = more control and more control should, in a faithless worldview, = less fear. But of course it doesn’t. It actually just piles more weight on.

And then of course it’s faith that allows him to give up power and control. Which is turning back to the Light. But it’s Light untainted by detachment-rules, because when he turns back, he does it for love of Luke, his son. It’s awesome. He’s the best character in Star Wars.

ORIGINAL TRILOGY: (it’s cheating to say Darth Vader after all that, isn’t it) Luke Skywalker

I don’t mean for it to be all the main characters, I just think they did the best job on the main characters.

Luke is my favorite because he’s got the same problem as Anakin, but from a new, less angry angle. Instead of being told he’s the Chosen One, he thinks he comes from nothing and is nobody. And he wants to be somebody. He wants to do something big and epic and noble, he feels like the world is going by without him, when we first meet him.

Then the moment he learns that his father was a powerful Jedi, a living legend, that dream takes shape. And that shape is “Jedi.” Just in time for him to also lose his loved ones. And the whole movie, A New Hope, everyone is telling Luke, “wait! Come back! Slow down! Don’t just rush off!”

But Luke is never appreciating what he has while he has it. Luke is never slowing down and learning (philosophically.)

He’s always looking ahead, trying to see the next challenge he will face, trying to rush out ahead and save the people and things he cares about from whatever danger is coming, trying to see beyond the horizon. He’s focused on the future, and what he can do to affect it.

But then he has to learn to let go of his own ability, his own skill, and “Trust the Force.” Something outside of himself. Which is something not even his father Anakin could ever do. So he switches off his targeting system and blows up the Death Star.

Luke is brave and takes action, leaping into danger and working hard to believe in everybody—which is awesome, for a Star Wars hero. Because taking action is, in its way, faithful and not fearful. And, believing in the good in others is a faith-based decision, too. And it’s where he starts to be different from his grudge-holding, control-freak father. But both those traits—action-taking and belief in others—can become fear-based, also.

So he turns out to grow up in front of the audience’s very eyes with what, ladies and gentlemen? Another inner conflict that needs balancing. Conflict between faith and fear.

And the fact that Luke is a farm boy who feels like his potential is unfulfilled when we first meet him, and then our final beat with Luke is him throwing away his potential to cut the villains’ heads off, is such a good character arc.

(And I’ll never shut up about how Mark Hammill got his own character wrong, because The Last Jedi was an excellent way to wrap up Luke Skywalker as a character.)

SEQUELS: KYLO REN

I want to be very clear here.

I think Rey is an incredible character. And Finn. And Poe. I think all three of them are. Especially Rey and Finn. I think so much heart and no-brainer Star-Wars-iness is infused into those three characters, that I could easily answer this question what I love about any one of them and what makes them my favorite. Easily. It’s like, a five-way tie.

But Kylo Ren pulls ahead because he, as a character, was an often re-tread concept, but he makes it feel new and real. Actually, I should probably have said Kylo Ren AND Rey are my favorites from this trilogy. Because they really are two sides of the same character.

But! Kylo Ren is the pick.

He’s excellent in too many ways to count. But the best way is that he refuses to learn from failure. Which is poignant, because it ties back into Faith Triumphs Over Fear from a new angle that his predecessor-characters hadn’t explored yet.

He’s so desperate to escape the legacy he grew up under that he can’t learn from it. And that’s tragic, because the things he might learn would actually help him to feel the legacy as a helping hand, not a burden.

I mean, think about it. It’s the Sequel Trilogy. That means, by definition, audiences were going to come into this trilogy expecting to be shown something UNDER THE LEGACY-UMBRELLA of the Trilogy that Came Before. In that film-legacy’s shadow.

So then you have a villain, a main character, who is a literal representation of that? He’s not just the son of Leia Organa, hopeful inspiring-voice of the free world—he’s not just the son of Han Solo, hero who saved the world and won the heart of a princess despite scumbag origins—he’s not just the nephew of Luke Skywalker, heir to the Jedi Legends and Most Powerful Warrior in the Known World—

—he’s the grandson of Darth Vader, the monster the world needed saving from. The man who used to be Anakin Skywalker, powerful Chosen One corrupted against all odds.

That’s too much famous legacy for one young character with incredible powers. He literally couldn’t have done anything OTHER THAN make “I’m Never Going to Live Up to What They Hope, So I Might As Well Lean Into What They Fear” his new identity.

It’s like if Kylo Ren represented the Sequel Trilogy, and the Sequel Trilogy said, “I can’t live up to the legendary movies that came before me, so I might as well not be them,” but then the whole time you, the audience, are desperate to see traces of the legendary movies that came before buried inside. The same way Leia, Han, Luke, and Rey are desperate to see traces of Ben Solo in Kylo Ren. Ben. Named after the guy who meant “HOPE” to Leia, his mother.

HOPE he’s going to turn out okay! Like I HOPE these movies can make me feel the way their predecessors did!

That’s their villain. A guy who lets pressure from legacy twist him up. Genius. Success.

But away from the meta, back to that Main Point:

His whole tragic origin brings sharp focus back onto the original Main Point of Star Wars: “Faith Triumphs over Fear.”

Because Leia lost her son by sending him away. Why’d she send him away? Because she was afraid of the evil he might fall to, so to control the outcome of that scary scenario, she gave into fear and sent him away. From Ben’s perspective, she had no faith in him.

Neither did his father. Until the end. When he let go of his fear, listened to Leia’s plea to “bring him home,” and let faith that Ben Solo was in there get himself stabbed. But his final act was to caress Ben’s face? Not fear? Faith that this monster who is actively stabbing him is still his son?

Just like Luke didn’t have faith in Ben Solo—he saw visions of Everyone He Loved killed by Ben, just like his old visions of Han and Leia dying by Vader’s torture, and he showed that moment of fear and lack of faith to Ben, and THAT is what led to Ben’s fall.

Everyone is afraid of Ben Solo’s commitment to and potential for darkness.

Except Rey.

She never actually knew Ben Solo, but she still has faith he’s in there, because a glimpse is all she needs—he thinks that’s weakness, the same kind of dream that keeps her waiting for her parents.

But if the third movie hadn’t ruined it, he would have learned that it was never weakness, it was strength—strength that outpaces fear. The fear of failure that’s been defining his whole character since the beginning.

Those are my faves! Thanks for asking! Sorry if it was boring that I picked the Three Main Male Lightsaber Characters.

[samanthadoodles]

Anakin Skywalker 💔

Print made for Fan Expo Chicago 2024. Signed by Hayden Christensen at the event.

[oooklathemok]

[tesb]

Osha bleeding a kyber crystal in The Acolyte – 1.08 (2024)

[oonaluna-art]

Anakin's corruption to the Dark Side.

These are some text-free panels from my comic-format fanfiction! [You can read it on AO3!]

[whitejays-galaxy]

I had to

Meanwhile Dooku and Palpatine

[vharax]

Even Jedi need furry friends✨

[loverboy-havocboy]

i think it's great that people who've suffered religious trauma feel a connection to anakin. i also think it's deeply troubling that the majority of them are either unable to recognize or unwilling to admit that the religion he was indoctrinated into and abused by was the sith and not, in fact, the jedi.

[no1kylorenfan]

creds: people on pinterest

[ukiyoebirds]

The Sass Master has spoken.

Joke work shopped with @krazycat6167.

You may need to click on the picture for better resolution.

I own nothing but my star wars brain rot.

[corukant]

master & padawan

[ginalongillustrations]

Darth Maul

He's done y'all and I am so happy

P.S. because I always feel like I'm deceiving people when it gets mistaken. This is a vitrail painting, not an actual stained glass window. I am the dollar store version of stained glass 😎

[book-stacks]

i'd be so fuckin useless if i were in star wars as a force user because i'd just be getting seduced left and right by hot sith guys