#that Jedi celibacy or not is in fact a CHOICE not a puritanical rule about no sex and just suppress any romance feelings

[charmwasjess]

So I finished the Glass Abyss! Some thoughts under the cut, mainly about Jedi sexual relationships 

Overall, fun, engaging book that clearly ADORES Mace Windu and spends time seemingly deliberately answering popular fandom complaints about him with positive depictions. 

The worldbuilding is really fresh, you kind of think you’ve seen everything in Star Wars and then they roll out a glassified (solar flares) world of spider people and mushroom zombies. 

I didn’t love the romance narratively; it felt kind of tacked on, but I did love how it contributes to a larger picture of how Jedi treat sexual and romantic relationships. This isn’t Rael just meeting his sexual needs in unattached hookups, Mace *loves* the spider lady. He’s also Master of the Jedi Order, the leader of the fucking Council. And significantly, he doesn’t think about this even once as a problem or conflict of interest. There is no “but aughhh I am a Jedi boo hoo forbidden romance” subplot, or the implication that he’s doing something wrong by falling in love and pursuing a romantic, physical relationship during a long mission. And at the end, it’s clear that both characters understand that their greater duty is to their respective peoples, but if their decision to prioritize that over the relationship changes, they’ll find each other again. That Mace is free to make that decision, to have the relationship, and choose to return to the Jedi Order without it, or stay and keep it.  I thought this was an interesting detail in a book that also has the whole: Anakin: the Jedi must ignore their feelings!!! Mace: uh, what? I think you might’ve misunderstood that kiddo …with the implication that Anakin is maybe not the most reliable narrator about the actual rules of the Jedi, and the further implication that the problem with him and Padme is the secrecy and the lying (and legal/conflict of interest that probably make such a marriage between a Jedi and a senator a problem), not the fact of a romantic relationship itself. Which explains more of Obi-Wan’s relaxed attitude toward it - okay, Anakin and Padme are clearly involved, but what’s the harm in that if he’s being a responsible adult about it?  Rael wants to just sleep around. Mace is free to follow his heart and fall in love. Their romantic and sexual options are choices, not mandates. And I love that, by contrast, in Master and Apprentice, same book as Rael’s sexual openness, Qui-Gon is horrified by the idea of Jedi having relaxed attitudes toward sex. It feels more realistic to me that different Jedi have their own individual different convictions, interpretations, and histories around the subject of sex and relationships. Especially contrasting Rael and Qui-Gon, who were taught by the same person and presumably given the same message about it but took it in two extremes. (Although. Okay, it’s kind of funny if Rael-era Dooku (still friends with Sifo-Dyas) gave him a sex positive messages and Qui-Gon-era Dooku (NOT friends with Sifo-Dyas, very sad about it) gave him a sex negative message.)