#sith defensive

[underwaterspiderbird]

no they're not. never were, never will be. sith teachings at the core freedom and empowerment, and the bad rep the sith get is because of the loud fuckwads who look at that & just think "oh look an excuse to be a dickwad", just like any group of people. the rest is just not true & is likely written in bad faith to vilify the sith & anybody who opposes the evangelical status quo, that guess what, the nazis and evangelicals clung right unto; just like the jedi.

if anything, the jedi are more nazi like in practice and nature. they just cover it up with a smiley mask. surprise bitch the world is scary, nothing makes sense and disagreeing with or questioning the "good guys" doesn't make you a nazi. valuing freedom and empowerment & agreeing more with the sith & considering yourself a sith do not make you a nazi and never will.

you're not just wrong, you're stupid. you know nothing about star wars.

The Sith are Nazis and it's never been subtle

This one ended up being really long. I spliced in some images when I could to break it up easier.

One of the things that causes the most friction in the world is the idea of morality. I know, that's the most water is wet statement ever said but I think people really miss just how much the nuance of morality goes over people's heads. Subjective, objective, relative, from a baseline we understand that there are different types of morality but I don't think people really grasp how much a persons personal morality can be wildly different to any another given person's, especially among people who share spaces like fandoms. Morality is shaped by personal experiences, there are personal experiences that are 99% ubiquitous among humanity like "Pain" that form the basis of everyone's moral compass, then there are the major cultural touchstones that no matter what your morality will be affected by, religion, nation, race, all that what have you. Everyone has an opinion on the Christian Church and that opinion is informed by your morals. People who have been abused by members of a church will have a very different view of the morality of a religion compared to people who have been raised Catholic compared to someone who was raised agnostic compared to someone raised agnostic and is queer compared to someone who has been raised Catholic and is queer compared to someone who has been raised Catholic and is queer and is also rich and so on and so forth you get it.

Morality is not a binary thing, and it's not a nine point grid either D&D, it's more like one of those circle charts that Jojo Stands get ranked on. You know the ones that always seem to show up in anime? I don't know what they're called. Except instead of a circle it's more like a ball, and everyone has this horrible looking 3D balls covered in bumps and spikes and dips and holes.

Why am I opening this ramble with a ramble about morality and religion? Because I'm on tumblr. When I decide I want to ramble about something I read the tags and see what the vibe is, see what people are saying about things. I'm not part of the "Fandom", I don't know the discourses, I see that there's Anti-Jedi and Pro-Jedi and "Stanikins" and all of these different labels and battlelines, and then I read about how people on either side are feeling attacked and harassed by people on other sides. I have no idea how real this is, I have no idea what kind of minefield I'm about to walk into. I'm just rambling about my thoughts and feelings about Star Wars because I like it and I'm a little extra aware that this one is going to ruffle feathers.

Because people are fuckin' worked up about Jedi. There are people who are making it part of their identity that they are anti-Jedi. And it's been happening for years, decades even. Because the experiences and trends of nerd culture has been pushing against systems and religion since I was a baby. Nerds being obnoxious atheists and smugly telling people "God isn't real" was basically the norm when I was a teenager, and before I was born nerds were dealing with being called evil and satanic. Nothing I'm rambling about here is new, in fact using D&D as a touchstone I think the current trend for nerddom's interaction with religion is ambivalence, despite faith and divine power being such an important part of D&D, there's basically zero interaction with divinities in 5e, and when there is it's hostile and has an asterisk against it. I'll do a ramble about this one day too

But the Jedi stuff is interesting to me, because there's a lot of directions people come at for it.

There's people who argue against just Jedi because they're a religion. There's people who argue the Jedi are slavers or kidnap children. People think Jedi are super beings who lord over everyone with their power. People think the Jedi force people to suppress their emotions and personhood. There are people who think Jedi are moral supremacists who silence and kill anyone who thinks about the Force differently from them.

I have some "Pro-Jedi" arguments to make but I'll save them for a different ramble, because this one's supposed to be about another group of people.

The people who think, from their point of view, the Jedi are evil.

The reason I rambled on so much about people being Anti-Jedi is because very often, these people end up being Pro-Sith. It's an obvious leap, if the Jedi are the problem then the people opposed to the Jedi might have the right idea. If your issue with the Jedi is that they disallow "Attachment", then here's the Sith who are all about Attachment. If your issue with the Jedi is that they suppress their emotions then here's the Sith who are always tapping into their emotions. There is an immediate appeal there.

Then there's the Sith Code, let's give it a read.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.

Pretty sweet, Passion is pretty positive, breaking chains and freedom. I can get behind that. The rest of Sith Philosophy is pretty swell too. It's about improvement through conflict. Your struggles make you stronger, makes you better, removes your shackles and lets you be free, but also recognizes that you will have to do whatever it takes to do so. The Jedi seek to wipe out the dark knowledge you attain, so you must sequester yourself and hide when you must hide, and strike when you must strike. It's stance could be summed up as something like... "The sacred mission of a Sith is to preserve the Sith Order's most valuable elements as you raise yourself to a dominant position, and all who do not are chaff."

There are people who are really into this. Like, really, really into this. They talk about how they apply this mentality to their real life. They describe themselves as Sith. There are also people who are only kind of into this, they think about positive Sith characters and make headcanons about the good things Sith do.

I need to stress, for those people, that what I am about to say is not hyperbole. I will provide sources.

The Sith Code and Philosophy is Nazi Propaganda. It is literally lifted from Mein Kampf. That quote I used to sum it up is a paraphrased quote from Britannica.com. That's Hitler.

The Sith Code was invented to be in opposition to the Jedi Code, its purpose is to twist a preexisting code to make you think the alternative isn't so bad and it uses codephrases to do so.

Passion, Strength, Victory, Chains, being Free, these are words that we have presubscribed meanings for, but what do they mean in the Sith Code? What IS Passion? What IS Strength? What IS Victory?

Most people I interact with see Passion as Love, passionate, exciting love, the exact thing the Jedi reject. But that can't be it, where's Palpatine's love? Where's Maul's? Where's Vader's?

Passion is obsession. The kind of obsession that will lead you to burning everything down if you don't get what you want. It's not letting anything stand between you and your goal, even if that thing is your goal itself.

Let's break the code down here.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion. We start with the obvious twist on the Jedi code, an immediate refutation of the Jedi's first line. It stands in opposition.

Through passion, I gain strength. We've already done Passion, it's a nice little dressing up of "Being a raging psycho"

Through strength, I gain power. Strength is often intermingled with power, but it's often spoken of interchangably with being able to set aside morals. The Sith isn't an amoral monster who just killed a bunch of kids, he's just STRONG enough to do what needed to be done

Through power, I gain victory. Power isn't a code word. Power is Power, Power is what it's all about and there's no hiding it. In the Sith way the only thing that matters is that you are powerful enough to kill your rivals and stand on top.

Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me. I think the notions of breaking chains and being Free is the cleverest part of the Sith Code's propaganda kit. It's still seeing use in The Acolyte and it's still convincing people that the Sith are right, even when the guy who's calling for freedom mercs a child then and there.

The Sith are not misunderstood heroes. They're Nazis. They're facist might makes right would be autocrats trying to convince you they're right so you'll validate them and prove them right.

Sith Philosophy is self defeating. Following the Sith Code means you need to define yourself on your conflict, meaning your conflict can never end. For all its claims of being free and breaking chains you can never be free of what drives you or you will lose the strength it gives you. To break your chains you need to hold onto them tight, and you can never let them go.

[underwaterspiderbird]

order 66 was NOT a genocide. you can only genocide people & cultures, you can’t genocide a systemically deified super-religion that wants everyone in existence to either agree with them & exist their way or burn in hell for eternity. any decent ppl who went down with the purge forfeit their lives down the drain along with their family, home & very sense of self. they. had. it. fucking. coming.

from an indigenous person, fuck y’all for even comparing order 66 to genocide & talking all over survivors of real genocides to save face for your evangelical faith & the people you think are good guys. you are not about to disrespect the continent-sized OCEANS of blood that make up our ancestors & loved ones who were lost to real genocide. fuck off.

[underwaterspiderbird]

there’s no such thing as “light” or “dark” sides of the force, there never was. its all just different expressions & experiences of the same energy field. “falling to the dark side” is but a religious scare tactic akin to “you’re good and are going to heaven if you believe what we believe but if you don’t you’re gonna burn in hell for all eternity”, no amount of palpatine’s generation of fuckery, the psychos within the sith that could also be found within any group of ppl, or jedi worship will ever convince me otherwise.

suck it bitches

[jedi-enthusiasm-blog]

Jedi Antis: The Jedi are too caught up in politics! They have power to change things, they just don't!

Meanwhile, the Jedi:

Every time they argue with a politician, they are shot down.

I wonder what that could mean? That maybe they don't have as much political power as the antis seem to believe? That maybe *gasp* they were meant to be the victims of Palpatine's manipulation the whole time?

[GIFs aren't mine. Credit to @david-talks-sw ]

[short-wooloo]

I feel that now, in light of certain things, is a good time to note that a red lightsaber is not in of itself proof of a sith

Jedi and sith are not the only Force cultures that use lightsabers, they're simply the most common, more than that, a red lightsaber is just a lightsaber with a corrupted crystal, not something unique to the sith, any dark sider can do that, as we see Dagan Gera do, actually he is in fact an example of what would probably be the most common example of a red lightsaber wielder in the pre-movies era, a fallen Jedi, someone who already had a lightsaber and corrupted its crystal after falling in order to symbolize their break from the Jedi

All of this is to say that the Jedi are not being foolish/arrogant/head in the sand/blind/etc if they don't automatically jump to "SITH!" upon encountering someone with a red lightsaber

[lokitapendragon]

Something that the book makes so much more obvious than the movie is Anakin's mental/physical state throughout the story. Like yes, he's scared out of his mind of losing Padme, but also he's never sure when he last ate or drank (and then it's Palpatine offering him water, naturally) and is so freaking sleep-deprived a human would be having hallucinations. I've had quite a bit of experience with insomnia/nightmares and I speak from experience when I say that brushing your teeth becomes a herculean task when you've been up since 3 a.m. and it's 7 p.m. Your friend asking if you can lend them a pencil feels like an egregious imposition. The world is out to get you. Everything sucks. Food starts to all taste the same. You ache but nothing actually hurts, you want to cry because your shirt is blue, the urge to smash all the plates in the cupboard is overwhelming. There is a REASON sleep deprivation is the first step in torture and brainwashing. Add to this the mistrust of the people who raised him, the threat of his wife's death, and all the pressures of war...geez, Anakin never stood a chance against Palpatine.

[sonic-fairyspell]

I find it a bit concerning how so many people think that Anakin "balanced" Force by killing a majority of the Jedi.... ... cause like that so called "balance" meant plunging the Galaxy into Darkness, there's not a lot of Good in the galaxy at that point, a fascist tyrannical dictatorship rose into power, and was run by two of the worst people ever.... and the defeat of said dictatorship and the two horrible people was seen as a very good thing.

So....

[netmors]

STAR WARS: Eleventh Fleet AU

Hey-hey, I worked, caught a cold, got sick and that’s enough… …so, concept art for the Eleventh Fleet.

Ar'alani and Vah'nya's designs are fairly simple, but the problem with them in particular, and the Chiss in general, is their clothing and style. There are many official references, including those from Legends, but each artist still has his own vision regarding, for example, the shape of the fleet. Somewhere there is a strong homage to the design from the old canon, somewhere it was modernized, and in the latter they added the same “honor's chains”, which look a little strange on the laconic form. It seems to be in the Chiss style, but very impractical.

As a result, I am reworking the design of the expansion and defense fleet uniform, but more on that another time. Let's return to Ar'alani and Vah'nya.

At the beginning of the events of the "Eleventh Fleet", Senior General Ar'alani on his flagship "Vigilant" is increasingly confronted with the Grysks. A year will pass since her last meeting with Thrawn, when the invaders of the Ascendency space will openly attack the Chiss ships.

Such cat and mouse would continue for another year until the disappearance of another Night Dragon class war cruiser, subsequently leading to disaster in the heart of the Chiss Ascendancy. The Senior General will be one of the few superiors who, along with Ba'kif, can survive. Much of this will be down to Vanto and Ronan - unaccounted for variables in the Grysk's plans. The trust placed in Thrawn's "alien protégés" paid off in full.

The Senior General was often accompanied by Senior Navigator Vah'nya. "Vigilant" almost always accepted missions to search for missing navigators. Vah'nya not only guided the ship through the stars and darkness of outer space, but she was much better at rehabilitating rescued navigators, as well as leading the other navigators on the ship. Friendship with Eli played an important role in this.

Because of her "anomaly" as a Navigator who hasn't lost her powers into adulthood, many of the regulations and rules simply don't work for Vah'nya the way they do for other girls. And to be an “anomaly” for Sindikure is a very subtle walking on the edge of a charrik. And yet, to the dissatisfaction of some aristocrats and syndics, the girl manages to balance on it for quite a long time.

+ bonus Ba'kif timeline concept art.

Because I’m not entirely sure that I’m right, but I really wanted to think about what this gorgeous grandpa would have looked like during the Thrawn. Ascendency Trilogy. And I also reworked his “chains” and other form elements quite a bit. And yes, I’m more than sure that Thrawn adopted Ba'kif’s “style” in his time.

[underwaterspiderbird]

“falling to the dark side” is the jedi’s way of stripping agency from anybody who breaks away from them or disagrees with them, it relies on the notion that jedi beliefs are the default & that “nobody could POSSIBLY be a decent, sensible person and NOT want to be a jedi”, & that’s how they get away with othering and conquistadoring anybody who doesn’t think like them.

same energy as “believe what i believe or you’re gonna burn in hell forever” and “my ex is a crazy bitch you can’t trust anything they say”.

[thehollowprince]

To the person in the tags of my Jedi post... no. The Grey Jedi aren't a thing and have never been a thing.

[underwaterspiderbird]

they're not tho. they're not. the galactic empire (palpatine's group) was based on nazis. and the swtor quote about "basing the sith on nazis"... is a big fat lie too. the sith just have different believe than the jedi & the jedi are pissy about it, fast forward to eons and eons of war and weirdos & regular ppl in both groups.

get the jedi's dick out your mouth and stop lying why don't you

No small part of Legends seems determined to make the Jedi look bad and the Sith look good. Considering the Sith are inspired by nazis and fascists, it's both funny and deeply concerning.

But I digress.

One of these attempts is the character Darth Vectivus, a human male Dark Lord of the Sith during the time of the Galactic Republic, when the Sith are in hiding. Apparently, he's a man with friends, with a family he loves and who love him back, a regular job… He's a perfectly normal guy, a perfectly mundane dude among thousands of megalomaniacs.

His first appeareance is as a ghost (some funky Dark Side thingy he created, btw), when he's trying to convince a Jedi (don't remember this one, I think it was a girl?) to strike him down. This is because these ghosts are connected to a living being, if the ghost is striken down, the being they're connected to dies. Vectivus is connected to Jacen Solo, who's on the edge of falling to the Dark Side. Apparently, Vectivus does not want a galaxy ruled by the kind of Sith Jacen Solo (or rather Darth Caedus) would become.

But, unlike other attempts at making the Sith look good in the EU, I actually like this guy. Why? Mostly for the funnies, not gonna lie. This Dark Lord of the Sith, the ultimate villain of the SW universe… is a perfectly normal guy with the same problems in his life as the rest of us.

Vectivus didn't know he was Force sensitive until his adulthood when, while doing Business™️, he and his employees came across a Dark Force nexus inside one of the mines they were working in. Fascinated by the power he could feel, he disolved his business, gave compensation to his employees, and went to search for the surviving Sith who could teach him. However, despite his Sith training, he remains a perfectly normal guy who lives a perfectly mundane life until his death, when he dies surrounded by friends and family. It's hilarious, can you imagine his Master's face? The sheer dissapointment?

He has restrain and moral standards. For example, he seems to be a decent boss and doesn't exploit his employees, cares for his friends and family and, just by guessing, isn't a complete asshole to his Apprentice since, whoever they are, they opt not to kill him despite the existance of the Rule of Two.

And yet… we find out he's still economically predatory, he still abuses his powers to harm and profit over rivals, and generally win at business. He isn't causing harm to those close to him, but he's still harnessing the Dark Side to hurt others.

That's the whole point, the Dark Side is always corruptive. Darth Vectivus is just less corrupted than most Sith.

That's it, that's what I like the most about the guy. He seems normal, is normal in a way… and yet he's still an evil bastard, only the regular evil bastard we find in our daily lives instead of the murderous crazy no-sense-of-restrain kind of Evil Bastard™️ we're used to see in a Sith.

It's… a bit of a grim reminder that evil is everywhere, in everyone, including you, and it can take many forms. That even the most kind-seeming people can be evil.

On the other side, the people he's murdered are… zero. Nonexistant, zero, nada. He's killed absolutely nobody. It's actually pretty funny. He's the only non-murderous Sith in existance, literally the only sane man in an Order of fascist megalomaniacs and it's hilarious.

I'm rather glad for his existance, actually, thanks Legends. Mostly because now I can say that I've killed as many people as a Dark Lord of the Sith.

[rickardt]

Shoulda dropped these the week of May 4th! Ah well, lol. This week I’ll be dropping some of my Star Wars fan OCs from my Fan-Fic “Once a Jedi”. Starting with the Thirteenth Sister! Woo!

[donttouchmeimsleeping]

The thing about Star Wars Narrative

"The Jedi ... the Sith ... you don't get it, do you? To the galaxy, they are the same thing. Just men and women with too much power. Squabbling over religion. While the rest of us burn." - Atton Rand

Atton was a pilot back during the Old Sith Wars, around 3980 BBY. He was less loyal to any one cause as he was loyal to the people he served with. He would serve for the Republic until Revan became a Sith and he would follow by defecting to the other side.

What I like about Atton is that he wasn't a Jedi and wasn't a Sith, but he was force-sensitive. He was, in the beginning of his character development, an outsiders perspective. Although he wasn't discovered to be one until he was well into his adult years by a captured Jedi who was going to be tortured into a loyal Sith. So he booked it out of the prison he was serving at under Darth Revan, because he knows what they do to Jedi, to any force-sensitives. Afterall, he was trained to be a Jedi Hunter to turn Jedi into Sith. He was well versed in how this process went.

Yet because he was neither, he got caught in the middle of the cross fire between the Jedi and Sith. He would eventually be trained into a Lost Jedi, which were basically Jedi that went underground during the Great Jedi purge, and part take in forming the foundation of a new Jedi Order. Which would survive and endure the Sith Wars, and all the way until the events of the Skywalker saga where the fate of the galaxy would hang in the balance because of yet another war.

But this time, light does not prevail in this war. A war hidden in another war. A war between the Jedi and Sith, just as much as it's between the Republic and the Separatists.

Is this not what happened in these movies? Because even though there is a war going on, the war the really matters is always between the Jedi and the Sith.

"To the galaxy, they are the same thing." People (in-universe) could not tell the difference between Jedi and Sith, because they both look the same. They both wear robes, both are too calm in dangerous situations, both carry dangerous plasma glow-sticks of different colors. The only ones that know the difference are the ones the have personal experience with one or the other. Or even both on the off chance.

"Just men and women with too much power. Squabbling over religion." Because from an outside perspective, like Atton or even us, that's what is looks like without context. Both sides have literally the same abilities just different attitudes at using them, and that where most people turn a blind eye. Because they don't believe these different attitudes mean anything in the face of the power they harness.

(Yet as an audience, with more information as a given, we should know the difference.)

"While the rest of us burn." But, by this point, everyone knows that Skywalker was so self absorbed that he crippled the galaxy by letting it be ruled by a Sith Emperor with a corrupt empire while also being a compliant right hand to said empire. Basically, in the war between light and dark, the rest of the galaxy is just collateral during and after the battle.

This has been the case in "Revenge of the Sith" and in "The Return of the Jedi" and even in the Old Sith Wars.

My point is, the Star Wars narrative has always been about three things: the Jedi; the Sith; and the Galaxy. The Galaxy depends on the Jedi prevailing, the Sith depend on the Galaxy rejecting the Jedi, and the Jedi do what needs to be done.

That is the narrative of Star Wars.

[azurecanary]

Rewatching Revenge of the Sith and i am so with Mace in this movie

For one, he straight up is about to throw a tantrum in the Council chambers, he is literally hopeless without his codependencies present (Obi-Wan, Padmé, and Ahsoka) and cannot think clearly about any of them

And then there's the whole genocide bit

[underwaterspiderbird]

nnnnno, the jedi just suck. their whole thing minus their self hype boils down to “be like me or else you’re a corrupted abomination & you deserve to either die or repent for existing”. if anything, ppl like qui gon, kanan, cal, etc either didn’t know any better & had no idea what they were being taught was unhealthy & bad weird,

or they knew and just continued to double down in their cope of “no the jedi MUST be right it’s everybody else that’s wrong” and were just as much accomplices in the jedi’s slaughter and genocide of nonbelievers as the rest of them. if anything, they were good little idiots who did whatever they were told as long as it carried the jedi’s hollow promise of goodness and justice. they drank the kool-aid.

if anything, we like anakin and ahsoka because they at least thought for themselves, even when they called themselves “jedi”, and eventually broke away from that cult to be their own people.

ain’ nobody forgetting the jedi’s puritan habit of throwing away and demonizing anybody, pupil or otherwise, that questions or even outright disagrees with the jedi notion of the force; suggests that maybe the jedi are wrong.

just take the L, you’re not fooling anybody. not even the mfs who pretend to believe you and back you up out of cope.

Anakin and Ahsoka are “pick-me’s.”

Don’t worry, I’ll elaborate.

Anti-Jedi folks will always, always, lift these two assholes up as “better than all the rest of the Jedi.”

They’ll say that they have “empathy,” and “compassion,” and that they “care about the little people and not just the politicians in the Senate”—or whatever the fuck else they wanna say—all because Ahsoka and Anakin “Aren’t Like Other Jedi™️”

Now, theoretically, you could say the same thing about Qui-Gon, Kanan, Cal, etc. except for the fact that they themselves don’t believe that.

They loved being Jedi, they viewed themselves as being Jedi, they loved their fellow Jedi and the Order. They didn’t betray their family, they didn’t blame their family for their own fucking genocide or basically call their practices stupid because “look how much better I am teehee.”

Qui-Gon, Kanan, Cal…they loved the Order and being Jedi in a way that Ahsoka and Anakin didn’t.

Ahsoka’s change is partly Anakin’s fault, since she only changed after being his padawan, but that doesn’t change the fact that now she’s so entrenched in her own ignorance that she truly believes that the Jedi brought on their own genocide because they didn’t train non-Force-sensitives.

So yeah, Anakin and Ahsoka are massive pick-me’s and y’all are too.

[short-wooloo]

If it was the Prequel era Jedi dealing with the events in acolyte this crap would have been settled in 2 episodes because they get shit done