#the jedi did it wrong in the prequel trilogy

[starbeltconstellation]

Helloooo, to all SW fans! 👋

Sooo, I have decided to make this like a… monthly? 🤔🤔 Reblog, to search for other like minded pro Jedi individuals like myself in the SW fandom, so I can find more of my little fandom corner.

So! 😁 I humbly ask those that are Pro Jedi, and do NOT blame them for their own genocide (🤦‍♀️🤢🥶) to reblog or like this post, so I can follow more SW fandom blogs.

I also would follow fans who are Anakin critical/anti Anakin. Although I’m more of a pro Jedi fan who still has sympathy and SO much love for Anakin’s character (🥲💔❤️), while still realizing the fault lies with himself, I also enjoy reading a lot of critical analysis on his character too.

But any Anakin fans who love him to death like me and aren’t afraid to hear criticism are welcome to like this post too! ❤️

The same goes with pro Jedi/pro clone blogs. The Jedi are my ultimate favorite blorbos, but the clones are also so very dear to me, and I love to read headcanons about them. 💕

Hopefully this isn’t a weird post. Lol. 😅🫣😂 I just thought this was a good way to expand outward into more fandom territory.

Thanks! 😜💕❤️✨

[asocial-skye]

I like the Jedi, but I don't know why "A powerful military organization that actively supports the government while not being a part of the government should have criticized the corrupt policies of their state and raised objections to enslaving and buying human beings" is such a negative take that it warrants being put in the jedi critical tag.

[starbeltconstellation]

I’m fr at my limit. 😭🤷‍♀️😬

This is why the Pro Jedi SW fix-it fic I’m writing is my free therapy. 😂

any version of “the jedi got what was coming to them” completely invalidates all of your opinions on them to me. btw ❤️

[jackdaw-kraai]

I think there’s something rather strange going on with all the folks who insist that the Jedi Order in the PT was right and didn’t forbid love and Anakin should just have followed their teachings when the whole point of the prequels is that they are prequels. They come before the OT, and the OT proves the Jedi wrong. They literally do not make sense if they don’t do that.

Luke, in the original trilogy, gains his ultimate triumph, his ultimate victory, because he loved in defiance of the teachings of the old Order. He quite literally had the ghosts of the past telling him, explicitly and without ambiguity, that he has to put his love for his father aside and kill him, as is the duty of a Jedi. Luke has the weight of millennia of teachings weighing down on his shoulders, telling him they knew and know better than a young, inexperienced man barely out of his teenager years. That he should follow their teachings or be destroyed. That is an immense weight to carry, and many people would and explicitly have given in to it in-universe. What are your feelings and ideals in the face of such immense legacy, after all?

But Luke doesn’t give in.

He doesn’t bend.

He says “I may be young, and I may be new, but I believe to my heart and soul that love matters more than this legacy. Matters more than your teachings.” And he says this to the ghosts of his mentors. That is such a powerful moment and one I can’t believe George Lucas didn’t create deliberately for even a second. This young man, being told he has to kill or die trying for a system that is dead or dying itself, that couldn’t survive itself, and refusing to do so. He is the living refusing to continue the violence of a dead generation. He is the young man refusing the draft into a war the old generation started, saying “peace and love matters more than you being right.” He is the embodiment of breaking the cycle.

And the movies vindicate him.

The main villain vindicates him with his last dying breath.

Darth Vader, dying, says “You were right.” and admits he and his were wrong. The main antagonist, Luke’s nemesis, in the face of his son’s immense, defiant love, gives way and does the impossible: he comes back to the light and dies a Jedi. The very thing the old Order says was impossible.

They were wrong. They have to be. The narrative demands it, the movies don’t make sense without it.

The solution was never to continue the cycle of the old Order, or Luke would have failed there, would have failed when he said “I am a Jedi, like my father before me.” And claimed that defiant, deviant, condemned definition of being a Jedi over the one presented to him by the Grandmaster of the old Order. If the old Order was right, Luke would have to be wrong. Be wrong about love, be wrong about laying down the sword, be wrong about refusing to fight. He would have to be wrong.

But the old Order is dead, explicitly killed by a monster, in some part, of their own making. It’s members only existing as bones in the ground or ghosts speaking from beyond the grave. They did not deserve it, it should not have been inflicted on them, but the narrative is clear on this: “The old way is dead, and was dying for a long time before that. Long live the new.”

Luke is that new. Luke is the breaking of the cycle, the reforging of swords into ploughs, the extended hand. Luke says “I don’t care how much I was hurt, I refuse to hurt you back, and you don’t need to hurt me either.”

“We can end this together and choose love instead.”

And Darth Vader, killer of the Jedi, End of the Order, lays down his arms as well, and reaches back as Anakin, saying “You were right.”

It wasn’t Obi-Wan, Yoda, Mace, Qui-Gon, or even Ahsoka who achieved the ultimate victory in the end, following the tenants of the old Order. It was Luke. Young, inexperienced Luke, who saw that the age of legacy handed to him was only history, that the sword handed to him as his life was only a tool, and that the decrees of the dead were only advice. And he took it all, said “thank you for your experience, but I’ve got it from here,” and laid it all down to instead extend an open hand towards his enemy.

And his victory, his ultimate triumph, his vindication, was that he was proven right when his enemy reached back and became just another person. Just another person, just like him.

The Jedi did not deserve what happened to them, and they did not deserve to die. But the story is clear on this: the Jedi of old were wrong, and the Jedi of new, the Last Jedi, was right. No sword or death will ever end the rule of the sword or end the bloodshed. But love?

Love can ignite the stars.

[mirrorofliterature]

I genuinely don't understand how anyone can look at the Council Scene in the Phantom Menace and think the Council were in the right

Jedi are supposed to be compassionate, right?

so where is there compassion for a recently freed former slave child, who has been separated from everything he ever knew, including his mum who is still in great danger as a slave, after risking his life for people he just met?

like. the council scene is supposed to show how set in their ways the jedi council has become in the prequel trilogy.

they look at a scared child and reject him for being scared because they judge him by the standards of a child raised in the temple.

it is callous, unempathetic and apathetic.

do you know how tiny and vulnerable nine year olds are?

they rejected a nine year old for factors completely out of his control and shunted him off to a war zone because he didn't have enough trauma already.

this is what I mean when I say the PT Jedi order is flawed

I want the Jedi Order to do better! I wish they had learned from their mistakes and treated Anakin with compassion instead of callousness, but canonically that's what they did.

now, if the 'jedi never did anything wrong' can excuse the council's treatment of a child in phantom menace, they are viewing the movie through a heavily biased lens and are blatantly ignoring blaring red flags

a jedi should be compassionate.

they were inflexible and rigid, adhered to conventions that where nowhere in their actual code.

not one of them asked why anakin was scared, or why he came to coruscant, or why his parents had given him up, or even bothered to learn about the huge sacrifice he made.

anakin is at his best self in PM.

it's a tragedy for a reason.

[jedijoanna]

I wish the Jedi could just disappear somewhere safe, happy, respected, and appreciated. The galaxy did not deserve them, and it suffered without them. 

I was reading (watching?) somewhere that as the clone wars progressed, the Jedi were beginning to lose their connection to the Force. And I cannot even begin to understand how terrifying and devastating that was for them.

I can't even imagine.

This thing that has guided them all their lives is suddenly disappearing. Their connection to their culture and their livelihood is being taken from them, and they can't put their finger on why.

The amount of confusion, fear, and anger Mace himself must have been feeling due to this makes me so sad for him. Because i'm sure a good number of it was directed at himself and his situation.

And it turns out he was right all along about who it was coming from, and was powerless to stop it.

(I think alot about how the Jedi put Anakin up on a pedestal of privilege, but it makes me sad to know they gave him everything they had and he still chose evil over them. That he toyed with them, and their connection to the Force. That he got to be the Chosen One while others arguably deserved it more)

And still, Mace died because he chose the path of the Jedi, and trusted the Force even when the Force was being shielded from him, because he still gave Anakin a chance

[david-talks-sw]

I was watching the Clone Wars featurette about the Holocron arc and Dave talks about the scene where Bane threatens to kill Ahsoka. He says "we're seeing a dark side of Anakin, and in a very clear illustration of why Jedi should not have attachments, we see that attachment get exploited." So clearly at what point in time he understood the whole attachment thing. What happened?

Unlike Karen Traviss, I think Dave Filoni actually understands what "attachment" means, in Star Wars. Apparently, it's the Star Wars theme that he and George spoke the most about.

"The biggest area of the Force and the Jedi [that] George and I have gotten into discussing the whole deal with attachments. And, arguably, that's what Anakin whole life is hinged on, is this - like you've mentioned - he has a lot of attachments to Artoo and how how right or wrong is that? Is it that the Jedi have made themselves dispassionate, that they are actually deceived by the Sith and they fall apart?" - Dave Filoni, Rebel Force Radio, 2012

What I've noticed is that, while understanding the meaning of attachment... Filoni doesn't seem to agree that the Jedi embody the concept of compassion.

He has acknowledged sometimes that "attachment is bad" is the theme of Anakin's story (but question if it's really so bad, unlike Lucas who says it's understandable but bad) but disagrees that the Prequel Jedi represent the obvious counter-theme, "compassion is good."

If you read what Filoni says, he argues that:

The Jedi have lost their way, taken the "rid yourself of attachment" rule and pushed it to an extreme where they've rid themselves of any empathy and thus compassion. They've focused so much on being selfless that they've forgotten how to love.

All except for Qui-Gon, who is the only one that truly knows how to love without getting attached, to love selflessly.

And personally, that strikes me as a coping headcanon, a way of reconciling the theme and feeling the Jedi like Mace, Ki-Adi, even Yoda and Obi-Wan are stoic, unlikable and too different from Luke.

Sure, they're not perfect, but nowhere in the films is the Jedi's stance on love framed as "bad" by the narrative. The narrative agrees with their philosophy, and George echoes it.

In fact, among 772 collected George Lucas quotes, I've never seen him state that theme while adding the asterisk that "of course, the Jedi of the Prequels have forgotten how to be compassionate, except for Qui-Gon who was the true Jedi."

And of course he doesn't do that. Because doesn't that muddy the waters so much?

Supposing Qui-Gon truly is the only character that embodies the concept of "compassion"... doesn't killing him off in the first film confuse a targeted audience of children?

Bearing in mind that the Prequels are about how greed makes people and institutions become the very thing they swear to destroy, and Star Wars as a whole is about being selfless instead of selfish:

In one corner, we have Anakin and the Senate showing what you're not supposed to do.

In the other, you got Padmé, Shmi and the Jedi, showing you what you should do instead.

Simple. I can see a kid getting this (and I did). But according to Filoni, that second point is incorrect. Instead, it's:

In the other, we have... Qui-Gon, who is one of the first film's four protagonists that dies at the end, without openly stating anything about the trilogy's theme. Theoretically, there's the Jedi who state and address the theme, but they don't themselves embody it so they don't count. So really... in this corner we have nobody (?)

That seems overly complex, a whole lotta hoops to jump through. Doesn't make sense. But hey, good luck learning the lesson, kids.

So yeah, Dave Filoni gets what attachment means. He just doesn't think it's as bad as Lucas' films frame it as, and disagrees on the Jedi narratively embodying the concept of compassion.

And I think it's coping. It's connecting non-existent dots, Always Sunny-style, to justify not liking characters that weren't meant to be developed much, due to their calm, collected nature and secondary/tertiary role in the story.

Coping and coming up with headcanons are what any irritated Star Wars fan does when they're confronted with something they're unable to make sense of.

“I care because I passionately believe that important stories ought to make sense.” As well you should—and when a story does not, you apply that passion to finding a way to make it make sense. [...] When a rational and inquisitive mind is confronted by the engaging yet irrational, it often responds in this manner. This process is not usually appreciated by those undergoing it; the most common reaction is a deep irritation. But isn’t that always how pearls are formed?” - Don DeBrandt, Star Wars on Trial, 2006

Unless they choose to make documentaries and click-baity YouTube video where they decide to spew hate and get angry pointlessly. Which I'd argue is still worse.

[tossawary]

Obi-Wan Kenobi in "Attack of the Clones" is incredible. He's bonkers. He jumps out a skyscraper window onto an assassin droid after he specifically told Anakin that they weren't going to investigate. Anakin saves him from a long fall by showing up with a speeder and Obi-Wan just chides him for being late as banter. Anakin outright sincerely says, "You're the closest thing I have to a father," while they walk into a nightclub and Obi-Wan distantly replies, "Then why don't you listen to me more?" and then goes to drink on the job. He mind tricks a random drug dealer into going home to rethink their life. Obi-Wan shows up to Kamino looking like a wet cat and confusedly goes along with the Kaminoans as they show off the clone army that he definitely did not order, and at no point does Obi-Wan or any of the other Jedi seriously bring up the fact that this is a fucking slave army. Anakin gets brought into the arena to join Obi-Wan in being executed by wild animals and Obi-Wan just acts like this is just another Space Tuesday for him and his padawan.

If we're going by the first two prequel trilogy films alone, then it's kind of like, "Yeah, Anakin obviously has a LOT of issues that are not necessarily Obi-Wan's fault, but wow, it kind of looks like Obi-Wan is NOT helping. Why did the Jedi Council let this man raise a child???" Like, sure, let's let the traumatized 20-something raise a traumatized 9-year-old, what could go wrong? Well, Obi-Wan is drinking on the job, apparently, possibly to ignore the fact that Anakin called him his dad. (Again? Doesn't seem like this is the first time!) And Anakin is, uh, immediately making the senator he's bodyguarding soothe and manage his upset emotions for him, before he then repeatedly pressures her into a secret relationship with him despite multiple refusals on her part. So, you know, it could be worse!

[moreespressoformydepresso]

Fandom's Takes On Trauma Are Terrible And Here's Why: brought to you by terrible Coriolanus Snow and Anakin Skywalker discourse

I've been on the verge of making this post for a while now, but I kept not doing it because this might be a bit of a hot take and I don't like offending people. However, I've been growing increasingly annoyed with the perception of one specific character type so lets see how much my dumb opinions stir the pot this time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. This will be focused mainly on my current main fandom: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes, as well as Star Wars. You'll see why. Now, I need to make it clear that I'm not judging anyone for their opinions on characters for any reason. In no way am I insinuating you're a bad person for having opinions different to mine or that you’re not allowed to have them. What I am saying is that fandoms have some frustrating and frankly insulting beliefs around trauma and those who survived it, and I'm gonna talk about it because I want to get this off my chest. With that said:

Y'all don't understand how trauma works and it annoys me

As stated in the title, I'm writing this because of the Coriolanus Snow discourse, specifically regarding whether he's a good or bad person. Lets rip off the bandaid straight away: He's a bad person. There's no question about it, Snow is a vile human being. And he's one of my favorite characters because of it. He's fantastically written and hands down one of the most realistic, viscerally terrifying yet utterly pathetic villains ever. And what I hate about the TBOSAS fandom more than anything (aside from how some of them treat the actors) is the way they take away all his agency in the story. But I'll put a pin in that because I have a lot to say about him and instead start at the beginning of my growing frustration with how fandom perceives trauma (feel free to skip through this post, I'll label my sections in case you don't wanna read this whole thing). There's two sides, and both are equally stigmatized and wrong. So lets start with the more obvious one through the lens of Anakin Skywalker.

The Star Wars Fandom's Weird Relationship With Traumatized Children Behaving Like Traumatized Children

So Anakin Skywalker AKA Darth Vader is pretty explicitly a Bad Dude who's done some Bad Things. Bro committed genocide, ain't no getting around that, except... It's a little more complicated. Sure, he did all those terrible things, but a lot of people take that to mean he was always a horrible monstrous big bad in the making who was destined to become the galaxy's worst nightmare. That's missing the whole point of the prequel trilogy, because those movies essentially serve to explain all the reasons for Anakin's descent into villainy, and he had surprisingly little hand in it. Growing up into slavery means he not only has a warped view of the galaxy thanks to all the horrors he's witnessed, it also means he lacks the teachings Jedi younglings get when they grow up in the temple. He was pawned off onto Obi-Wan who had only recently been knighted and was in no way ready to raise a child, and became "friends" with Palpatine who fed him all sorts of lies to manipulate him into becoming little more than an attack dog. Not exactly ideal circumstances for a child in their formative years. Did Anakin shirk the Jedi's rules? Yes. Did he do dumb stuff? Yes. But he was a traumatized teenager, of course he's acting out. When he massacres the Tusken Raiders, it's Padme Amidala who reassures him it was the right thing to do. He felt guilty about it, so this idea that he's some apathetic monster from the second he's born is dumb. It's not that Anakin was born wrong, it's that the people around him either failed to help him go down the right path or were actively trying to push him down the wrong one. Anakin never fully grasped the Jedi's ideals, because the person meant to teach him just wasn't equipped to do so. If he'd had someone to teach him how to get a hold of his emotions, distancing himself enough from them to make the best possible decision and helping him understand the importance of letting someone go when you have to, he wouldn't have fallen to the dark side the way he did.

Anakin did terrible things, but blaming it on him just having an evil heart shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how people's environments change who they are. A life in slavery, where he was not allowed to have anything and risked losing what he held dear at any second with no control over it likely caused him to be very possessive of what he held close to his heart once he did have some control over what he kept and lost. Shmi died because he wasn't there to protect her (in his head), so he clung to the people he loved so he could save them the way he couldn't save his mother. Palpatine actively groomed him, if you think that didn't have any effect on him I don't know what to tell you. Throughout the war, he constantly lost people he was close to. That control he had slowly starts to fade as Ahsoka leaves and he starts having dreams about Padme dying. He does everything to save her, only to find out she betrayed him (in his mind, a thought quite likely influenced by PTSD as well). I can tell you that believing one of the few people you trust has betrayed you can make you act very impulsively. Anakin made an impulsive decision and regretted it for the rest of his life. He wasn't born a monster, the world turned him into one.

However, that does not excuse his actions. It explains them and spreads the blame to more people, but his actions are still his actions. Anakin separated himself from his past because of all the pain it brings him, and in doing so he did a lot of bad things. And he still needed to face consequences for those actions, even if the events that led up to them aren't necessarily on him entirely. If he'd gotten therapy, he wouldn't have choked Padme to death. Possibly he wouldn't have attacked the temple. But he didn't, and he did all those things trauma or not. I have major issues with the way some Anti-Anakin parts of the Star Wars fandom insist on ignoring or writing off his trauma, but that doesn't mean I'm absolving him of all guilt.

An explanation is not an excuse, and that sentiment brings us to the reason for this little rant:

Coriolanus Snow's defenders have a habit of infantalizing trauma survivors and I wish they would stop

Oh Snow, how your amazing character completely flew over the heads of most of your loyalest fans. I'm joking, obviously, but also... It's not exactly wrong. Now, I need to make this clear: I'm not insulting Snow fans here. I'm kind of one of them (I hate his guts but I love how he was written, it's a love hate relationship). However, the way people talk about his trauma... I'll be honest, it's kind of sickening for reasons I'll talk about later after getting through the technical(?) stuff. Where the way people view Anakin disgusts me, the way people treat Snow disturbs me. Because people view The Ballad Of Songbirds and Snakes as if it's some typical tragic villain backstory that humanizes and in some ways justifies who he became, to show what changed him from a normal person into a monster. It's not. It actually shows that Snow has always possessed the traits that made him the monster we know from the OG series. What it does is explain why specific things were so important to him and how he grew to lose all redeeming qualities, letting the worst aspects of his personality grow and take over until it's all there's left of him.

What made Snow do stuff like poison political adversaries and constantly beat down the districts so they don't rebel? A thirst for power. A thirst he's always had, born from the feelings of entitlement he held thanks to his family's previous status. He deserves that power in his mind, so he'll do anything to get it. Power, control, and influence are his driving motivators. It's at the back of his mind throughout TBOSAS, and by the time he becomes a gamemaker it's the only motivation he has left. Those traits, the things that pushed him to do what he did, they were always there. There was just more stuff to cover it up. Stuff that fell away with time. Snow is a terrible person, but people pretend he's some poor misunderstood baby who just needed a hug because... why? Because he has trauma. And that's the root of the problem. Does he have trauma? Absolutely. He survived a war, he lost his parents, struggled through poverty while being raised by propaganda from the Capitol and was arguably groomed by Gaul. Sound familiar? It's kind of like Anakin. Horrible childhood filled with loss, less than amazing figures raising him and grooming. Except people use the opposite argument for him which is equally wrong: he's traumatized, so we cannot blame him.

Yes we can.

Trauma does not justify your actions. It might explain them, but you are still accountable for your own actions. Snow murdered people, starting with Bobbin, and every single time it was his choice to do so. It doesn't matter why he made that choice, because he still did it. He ruined countless lives and ended nearly as many, both directly and indirectly. No amount of trauma justifies that. I've seen people claim he's just an anxious young boy who's a poor victim of circumstance, and anyone who doesn't believe so is simply unable to separate the actions of an 80-something-year-old from the 18-year-old, but... No. That's one of the most braindead takes I've ever heard, I'm sorry. Snow hadn't committed the crimes of his older self yet, but the behaviors he shows in TBOSAS are the ones that led him to doing so later on and ignoring that is just stupid. I don't need to judge Snow based on his later actions to call out how fucked up he was in TBOSAS. Again, he chose to murder several people and deluded himself into believing he was justified. That's what makes him a great character. Bad people always believe, on some level, that they're doing the right thing. It's fascinating. But people take his words at face value when he says he's doing the right thing, and the whole point is that he's wrong. He's lying to himself. Because that's what people do sometimes. Snow's family was knocked off its throne, and Snow clung to the idea that the districts are beneath him and at fault to cope with that. He deluded himself into believing Gaul's dumbass theory to justify continuing the games.

It's the exact opposite of Anakin Skywalker: Trauma is relevant, it does inform your perspective on the world and your actions, but it does not mean you can do no wrong. Snow had every chance to be a good person: Knocking Bobbin out or running away instead of murdering him, joining the rebellion with Sejanus, staying in district 12 with Lucy Gray and being honest with her. But he killed Bobbin. He fucked over the rebels and got Sejanus killed. He lied to Lucy Gray and destroyed any chance he had with her. Every chance he got, he threw into the fire without hesitation. Anakin leaned into being a bad person to forget the past, Snow chose to be one because it benefitted him the most. Neither of them are excused because of their trauma, their descent into villainy is simply explained. You know why? Because both of them created new victims. Snow was complicit in the murder of hundreds of children before becoming responsible for thousands more, he killed people with his own hands and ruined several lives over the course of TBOSAS. All that pain he caused isn't erased because we can explain why it happened. Even at 18, Snow has many things he should be held accountable for. War, being an empoverished orphan, being groomed, none of that nullifies the shit he's done. People who say Snow's just an anxious, young, traumatized boy are one side of the horseshoe theory of the myth of "the perfect victim". The "Anakin's Trauma Should Be Ignored Entirely" crowd are the other side. Which brings us to...

It's all horseshoe theory

To conclude the analytical part of my post, I'll bring it back to what I briefly mentioned in the intro to all of this. Agency. That's the running thread here. Both in cases like Anakin and cases like Snow, the fandom takes away all agency a character has in the story for the sake of justifying one's feelings about them. Anakin was born a monster and he was always destined to be evil. It wasn't the trauma, it wasn't the events of the story, he's just bad. On the other hand, Snow is a good person who was made to do terrible things by his trauma. It's all the trauma and nothing else. His bad childhood caused him to be this way and it has nothing to do with his own worst personality traits. See the connection? In both these instances, the characters had no influence over who they became. With Anakin, nothing could've had any influence because he's just born wrong. With Snow, it's everything around him that shaped him into who he was. Both scenarios completely ignore the character and focus on external factors to explain everything. One demonizes trauma victims by saying those that went off the rails are just bad people and there's nothing to be done about it, the other infantilizes trauma survivors by saying they shouldn't be held accountable for their actions just because they have trauma and it's only when they're older and should know better that we can bring consequences down on them.

Victims of trauma should be held accountable, though. The only thing the presence of trauma should change is what kind of accountability. Merely locking them up won't change anything, they should receive help to work through their problems while residing in a place where they cannot hurt anyone else. Including themselves. That is what acknowledging trauma is useful for. But this? This is doing nothing but stigmatizing trauma survivors even more than they already are, and I hate it. And you wanna know why I hate it? Because I've been both sides of this horseshoe, and it nearly got me killed.

The part where I talk about my Tragic Backstory(TM) to explain why this bothers me so much

This'll be a little heavy, so while I'm not gonna go into detail I advise you to please be careful. If you're not in the headspace to handle talk about actual real life mental health issues, feel free to stop reading here. I'm putting this at the end for a reason. If you really wanna know why people's perspective on Snow disturbs me but don't wanna risk getting triggered, skip to the last bold line in this post.

Without going into detail, I've dealt with some pretty big mental health issues throughout my life. One of them is PTSD, so believe me when I say I understand that trauma can heavily influence one's actions in ways even they don't understand. But I had to learn the hard way that there's a difference between explaining and excusing. I used to believe that, because of my previous experiences, I was entirely justified in doing what I was doing. Kind of. At that point, I didn't know that what I was experiencing was PTSD, but I did feel justified in my actions the same way Snow does. I explained every bad thing I did away and wrote it off as nothing or sometimes even as a good thing. Granted, I never did anything as big as committing murder, but I don't live in a country as dark and horrible as Panem so we'll chalk it up to that. As I grew older, I started to recognize the ways in which I accidentally hurt the people around me, and eventually had the realization that my past does not in fact justify the pain I was causing people entirely uninvolved in what happened to me. They had nothing to do with that, and shoving all my pain onto them the way I did was wrong. My view of myself pivoted to the other side of the horseshoe. If I'm not justified, am I... am I bad? Am I evil? Am I just born wrong?

I don't know how to explain this to anyone who hasn't gone through this themself, but that is a horrible feeling to have. To feel like you're just bad and there's nothing you can do about it... It kills something inside of you. A hope, a will to keep going and keep trying. Why bother when you cannot be fixed? I've lost the will to live at two points in my life, and that was one of them. And now I get to see both of these mentalities be repeated by dumbasses who don't understand the first thing about trauma. It's... not fun. It's grating and aggravating in a way I can't accurately bring across with just my words. It makes me wanna scream and laugh hysterically until I cry.

Here's the thing: I relate to Snow, and the way people perceive him disturbs me on a visceral level.

As I said, I justified my own bad behavior the same way he does. I convinced myself I was a blameless poor victim who had no hand in their actions. But just like Snow, I did. Not nearly as much as I would have liked, but I did. I learned to control the defensive mechanisms my trauma gave me, and I grew from it. Seeing people defending Snow with the same arguments that kept me from ever getting over what happened to me, crying out that he's just traumatized so none of it's his fault... it disturbs me. Because they're outsiders who should be able to see the pain he caused others and realize that nothing changes the fact that he did that. But they don't. They're me, without any of the personal stakes that kept me trapped in my own delusions. It's all just fiction, and I know that, but it hits just a little too close to home for my comfort. It's a little too raw and a little too real for me to just let it go and move on again like I always do.

I'm sorry for the rant, I didn't mean to make this post this long but I guess I hope you find something of interest in here that made it worth reading? Have a nice day 💜

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Do you think they should have went with the Chosen One plot for Anakin when they made the prequels? I've been rewatching the original trilogy and there is no mention of any prophecy. It seemed more like Anakin was a very powerful Jedi, but nothing grander then that.

Then, all of sudden the prequels are saying that he is the literal messiah of the Galaxy, destined to bring balance to the Force.

I mean, this isn't the blog for that, anon.

It's really not the blog for it not just in the sense that we talk about how things are here not how we want them to be but also because I think the Original Trilogy are also incredibly bad movies. They're not winning awards for being any better than the rest of the gang or any more righteous, they just have nostalgia, a few great actors carrying the weight (but only a few and not even some of the most important ones), a fantastic soundtrack (that admittedly is strikingly similar in parts to Holst's The Planets), and some great special effects and editing as of the time that George has tried to strip away with every passing year. It's no skin off my nose if the Prequels took some liberties to make things better (and... the thing about The Prequels is that they're not better, of course, but the plot is a lot more compelling than 'the Death Star blew up once' followed by a short break then 'the Death Star blew up twice')

But as for your question, it didn't strike me as too odd we didn't hear of it, because that's the whole thing: Jedi culture is wiped out to two known survivors (that we see anyway). And per those Jedi survivors, Anakin was very clearly not the chosen one as he did anything but bring balance to the Force.

So, you have Obi-Wan who doesn't want to talk about fucking any of it and lies through his teeth multiple times to Luke because he just doesn't want to talk about any of it. Then you have Yoda who wants to talk about it even less.

Neither is bringing up "did you know there was this prophecy where your father was supposed to bring balance to the Force? Boy, did he sure not do that".

Vader certainly isn't bringing it up either as, well, look at his miserable life and how much he hates himself and the Jedi. He's not bringing up their stupid prophecy that clearly wasn't true.

Remember very little is known about the Jedi for the common people, especially after Palpatine's taken over and spread propaganda and such. Han doesn't even think the Jedi are real and if he does it's "that weird space religion cult thing that died out???"

That is to say the prophecy is not common knowledge and especially not for people like Luke, Han, or even Leia for that matter for all she's a little more Jedi adjacent.

Even within the Jedi we see that people don't take the prophecy seriously. That was a Qui-Gon thing. He was super into that prophecy, yo, and the other Jedi (Yoda, Mace, Obi-Wan even) all sort of stared at him looking very upset for insisting on this.

And in the war, while Anakin was an exceptionally talented Jedi, he wasn't really used as a propaganda piece/seen as the only Jedi who would save them all.

The prophecy was just the reason Qui-Gon insists on training him despite his age and is one of those things that seems to have actually been correct for all that no one will ever admit it.

(@therealvinelle can correct me if I'm wrong but I'm going to lay down something that will make people very upset: Anakin being "The Hero with No Fear", seen as one of two great Jedi in the war who are doing so much for the cause more than anyone else, and the extra focus on this prophecy was an invention of Disney's 2008 The Clone Wars, not the films.)

[oreolesbian]

Let’s discuss two clips taken from a scene in Return of the Jedi.

The first thing to establish is the metatextual disclaimer that ROTJ was released in 1983. The prequel trilogy was released in 1999, 2002 and 2005 respectively. Because of this, it is important to note that most of the lore about the Jedi Order we know from newer canon does not apply when talking about this film in isolation. In an in-canon context discussion, this is irrelevant, but here I want to discuss specifically the themes and pivotal points to the characterization of Luke Skywalker as established by the original trilogy as a whole.

The entire ROTJ Dagobah sequence as it sits in the narrative is a direct response to the events of the ending of Empire Strikes Back, where Luke disobeyed Ben and Yoda’s instructions and abandoned his training to confront Vader and save his friends before he was ready. That scene in ESB on its own already establishes a rift between Luke’s values and the values of Ben and Yoda. However, it is heavily implied that Luke was wrong to do this because he loses to Vader on Bespin and nearly dies, just as Ben and Yoda feared. However, the revelation of Vader being Luke’s father changes the scenario drastically.

In the scene above and the scene prior to it (Yoda’s death), Luke directly confronts both of his teachers on being lied to about Vader’s true identity. Because up to this point, Luke knows he has been training to eventually kill Vader (and the Emperor). Not bring him to justice - kill him.

Luke, having idolized his father since childhood (as A New Hope establishes), is realistically troubled by the news that he now has to kill his father. So troubled, that he asks Yoda, “Is Vader my father?” just so he can be sure. Luke is visibly angry in this scene when Yoda insists that he knowing would have only made him act more irrationally and emotionally. That he wasn’t ready for the truth. But the underlying question remains, did Yoda or Ben ever really plan to tell Luke the truth? After all, Yoda is disappointed that Luke found out, because he knew it would create resistance.

Yoda and Ben are fearful of another Vader, and it’s why Yoda was reluctant to train Luke in the first place.

After this, Luke confronts Ben with the same question, upsetly saying, “You told me Vader betrayed and murdered my father.”

So now we have a second scene of Luke directly doubting his mentors’ motives. Whichever character you agree with being in the right as an audience member, however, is irrelevant, because in terms of character, Luke believes he is right, Ben believes he is right, Yoda believes he is right, etc. And instead of Luke blindly following the wills of his teachers, he truly starts to question whether being a Jedi for him is directly what Yoda and Ben want from him.

Ben laments in the scene above that Luke is their only hope and that Luke’s refusal to kill his own father without at least attempting to find the man he used to be is a doomed scenario. Ben and Yoda have every right to think this - they have seen Vader in both forms and have effectively lost hope in him. Luke, who has only seen a dark side of Vader, has more room for optimism to reclaim the Jedi Knight his father once was.

Not only this, but as a scene, Luke turning against Ben and Yoda’s wishes directly leads an audience to think: ‘Hmm. Vader went against the teachings of Ben and Yoda. Now Luke is doing it too. Is this his path to the Dark Side?’ Which is another narrative point to the scene. All of ROTJ is pushing this ‘what if’ now that we know Luke and Vader are related — all which builds to the ultimate climax of Luke’s decision in the final throne room fight.

“You cannot escape your destiny,” is what Ben says to Luke. But this is what Luke does.

He proves Ben and Yoda wrong.

He proudly proclaims that he’s still a Jedi, but in a way he believes in.

And it’s not even to say that he fully disagrees with Yoda and Ben, because he clearly respects them as his mentors. But Luke changes from ANH to ROTJ. He starts to form his own ideas about what a Jedi is to him, rather than what he’s supposed to do for the good of the galaxy. He makes a decision that he alone can stop Vader without killing him. That he’d rather lay down his life and die a Jedi than do what Yoda and Ben asked him to do (and ironically, what Palpatine also wanted him to do) and live as something he doesn’t believe in.

“Bury your feelings deep down, Luke. They do you credit, but they could be made to serve the Emperor.”

For full context, Ben says this immediately after revealing Leia’s true identity to Luke - which leads us to believe that Luke’s care for his sister is something that could be used against him (as we see in the throne room fight when Vader threatens Leia). Luke cares for Leia and Han immensely, hence why he risks everything to rescue them on Bespin. And ultimately his fear of losing Leia is what makes him snap in his fight on the Second Death Star (which we later learn in the prequels, of course, as a direct parallel, is that Anakin’s fear of loss is what drove him to the Dark as well - so it matches up that Lucas is focused on fear as the emotion Jedi must control above all else, and interestingly enough, fear is driving Yoda and Ben throughout the duration of the OT). His feelings served what the Emperor wanted from him - to kill Vader and take his place.

But Ben also says - “[your feelings] do you credit.”

A simple acknowledgment that maybe, maybe Luke’s endless compassion and determination could change something. For the audience, who is fearful that Luke may fall Dark, and for Ben, whose last bit of hope is left lingering on a sentence. “You were our last hope.”

Luke Skywalker is hope. He’s hope. He’s Ben’s hope. He’s Padmé’s hope. He’s Anakin’s hope. He’s Han and Leia’s hope. He’s the Rebellion’s hope. He’s the Jedi’s hope. He’s the universe’s hope. He’s a New Hope.

He represents all of that in this film - in this few seconds, we get so much character.

And this - quintessentially - is why ROTJ is the perfect blueprint for understanding Luke’s character. How he interprets the Jedi way, how he has complicated emotions that both serve him well and lead him astray, and how he triumphs through hope.

So in full — Luke redefines what being a Jedi is for himself. In ANH, he expects it to be a whimsical adventure (it is not). In ESB, he expects it to be whatever Yoda and Ben have planned for him (it is not). And in ROTJ, he doesn’t know what to expect anymore, but embracing what he feels is the right thing to do is what pushes him forward.

He claims the Jedi title in a way that is fully earned and does not need the approval of his mentors nor the standard training (that he would never get in his era anyway). The Jedi return because of Luke - but they come back different. And not in a direct ‘the Jedi of old were all bad’ way, but in a ‘looking towards the future’ way. Because Luke believes in and values the idea of making your own destiny and the flexibility of the Force’s will. An idea which would inevitably pass to his students (who would then have their own personal interpretations of the Jedi way or even the Force in general).

So yes — writing Luke in a way where he teaches exactly the way the old Code would’ve gone without critical thought, or having him lose faith in a student over a single bad feeling, or disregarding him (meta-textually) as a Jedi, or presenting him as sticking to a very strict and specific set of rules for how training is supposed to work, etc., is all directly contrasting to the arc we are presented in the original trilogy.

[antianakin]

I think something a lot of fans of Anakin tend to forget about him is that his story is told and looked at in reverse: the effect of his actions (Vader and the Empire) were shown an written before the cause (him being a Jedi and then falling). Vader, the irredeemable monster, being forgiven by Luke, is supposed to be a statement on Luke’s character, not Anakin’s. Vader isn’t post Anakin, Anakin is pre-Vader. Framing him like that, it’s suddenly clear just how flawed and terrible Anakin was even before he took a nosedive off the diving board of common sense (if he was ever on it)

The redemption that so many fans want to give Vader, then, is framed in film less as Vader realizing he’s wrong and doing a 180. It’s Luke recognizing how close he is to becoming Vader, choosing a better path, and getting tortured for it. Honestly, as far as Vader’s actual redemptive moment, it’s a fairytale moment of “death equals redemption” that holds up in the narrative of Luke’s story, but wouldn’t actually accomplish anything for Vader.

All that to say… Anakin should be recognized as being Pre-Vader, and if someone wants to do a fixit good ending story with him they either need to kill him off or spend a LOT of time getting him to actually recognize his failures and then turn away from them.

(Unfortunately, that’s a LOT of *work*, so most people just woobify him and call it a day. Thank you for your work of correcting this misunderstanding, and sorry for the long ask 😅)

In fairness, Lucas had a pretty good amount of the story from the Prequels WRITTEN already, he just ended up having to make the story in reverse, which is why there's references to Anakin having been a Jedi who fell and the Clone War. But most of it is just that... references. We ARE focused on Luke's story and so Anakin's background is there to, as you say, highlight LUKE'S choices and struggles and triumphs. We never find out why Anakin did the things he did in the OT (aside from Obi-Wan's comments about his own arrogance in trying to train Anakin which the Prequels retconned anyway), so Anakin's choices are a reflection on Luke more than anything else because Luke is the character we actually know.

And... yeah. Anakin's redemption is difficult for me because I get why it happened the way it did in the OT. Anakin's biggest crimes within the context of JUST what we see in the Original Trilogy are against Luke himself (chopping off the arm, killing Obi-Wan) and so the fact that he dies by saving Luke means he's fairly directly addressed those crimes and made amends for them. He can die having fixed those mistakes and forgiven by the person he's hurt the most. It works. But adding in the Prequels means now there's the Tuskens he murdered, Padme who he manipulates and betrays, the Republic he's dismantled, and the Jedi Order that he betrays and genocides (and adding in TCW means we can also include the clones that he betrays and enslaves). And now all of the sudden there's a LOT more that we have directly seen him do that needs to be redeemed and a lot more amends he needs to make and a lot more people whose forgiveness he doesn't have and will likely never get. There's a lot of things that killing Palpatine can never and will never fix or undo. It doesn't directly address almost ANY of those sins. And so this sudden redemption via death stops feeling so satisfying because it just... doesn't actually mean anything in the face of what we've now seen him do.

Like you say, it holds up if you just look at Luke's narrative, but it falls apart when you look at Anakin's own.

Redeeming Anakin while taking into account everything he has done over the Prequels, TCW, Rebels, the Obi-Wan Kenobi show, and anything else that's been written for him in other media would be a difficult story to write. It WOULD take a lot of time, he may never actually completely redeem himself for what he's done because he may never truly be able to let go of some of those fears or some of his guilt and grief. He may never quite lose the instinct to react to things with violence. It SHOULD be messy and complicated, but that's not always the most satisfying story to write or even to read, so that's where we end up with woobified Anakin who just gets to do one slightly goodish thing and call it a day.

[piglet26]

Alright, Is the Star Wars Fandom Sexist?

As you probably know Daisy Ridley signed onto do another Star Wars film. I welcomed this..... mostly. If they don't reunited the Dyad I'm very curious as to what would be the point (more on that later.) Well, I saw this quote from a recent interview of hers, "I think my take is things get blown out of proportion and the interactions I've ever had with people have been nothing but wonderful and supportive," Ridley said. "I've only ever been embraced. And I think we're going to make a great film."

Now whether or not Ms. Ridley actually feels this way.......she's intelligent enough to say just this. Undeniably, all of the men who have talked shit about her for the past 7,8 odd years will now have softened to her for simply not holding them accountable. Hey, that's the biz kids. Don't make enemies out of your audience. No man wants to be called a sexist even if he actually is one.

Is there sexism in Star Wars? Yes and no. It has never been a straight answer. Now if you ask a lot of men in the Star Wars fandom if they are sexist..... they'll say no. Why? Princess Leia of course! Padme! Strong women who directed men, issued orders and politically led. They did and do support these women. In fact, if you had asked me if the fandom was sexist prior to The Sequel Trilogy I would've said that the SWF is one of the most progressive fandoms for women and has been since the 70s!

Where did it all go wrong?

Well, maybe this

Or, this

Maybe just good ole fashion paranoia. Personally, I think it's a combination of all three. The minute Disney bought Star Wars the fandom was primed to distrust it. Change, for better or worse, was on the horizon. Hell, even worse, corporate change. It's Rage against the Machine raging FOR the machine. Least we forget how Star Wars started...... as a "fuck you" to corporatized assembly-line movie production.

However, we are not her to discuss whether The Sequel Trilogy was good. Debatable..... with the exception of Reylo. That's just iconic. We are here to discuss how on earth Daisy Ridley ending up bearing the majority of the responsibility for its failures. Maybe even more importantly the "Feminization" of Star Wars.

A sane person could tell that. The same people screaming "Star Wars is Dead" for the last seven years are still saying the eulogy. Still going on whining and complaining about it. There is a general rule when franchise start to go off the track - you ignore it was ever made. Godfather 3? Tokyo Drift? Never happened.

If you don't like what Star Wars has become then the first person on your shit list should be it's creator. George Lucas. George could've signed over Star Wars under the guarantee that whatever outline he produced for The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Disney HAD to stick to - he didn't. He could've signed on a producer - he didn't. He could've picked someone else except Kathleen Kennedy to replace him - he didn't. Somehow George Lucas has escaped any responsibility in what his life's work has become. Maybe the fandom got it out of their system after the Prequel Road Rage.

News that George Lucas's treatments were thrown out and the extended universe being cancelled didn't exactly calm down the public.

Maybe the next person should JJ Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy for for thinking that there was something wrong with Star Wars. Star Wars already was diverse. It already HAD strong females. Yet, there they went finding problems that didn't exist. Why? Money. Disney has a powerful female/family demographic. Star Wars a strong male demographic. Disney sought to combine the best of all worlds in one franchise and they were the company to do it. Look at what they accomplished with Marvel!

Then the announcement came that there would be a female protagonist. A female Jedi to be exact. I thought this was different and interesting. The men did not. What they saw in there head was THE FORCE IS FEMALE in flashing bright lights. This was it. Confirmation. Star Wars was about to get pussyfied. From the get-go Daisy Ridley's Rey was to be a focus, a target, for the mistrust, uneasiness and rage from the men.

Let's me be clear men are ok girls liking their stuff. As long as girls are not in a position to influence whatever it is they like, or rather "ruin it." Can you blame them? If a bunch of straight dudes came in and started writing Sex and the City I'm telling you- they'd ruin it.

The Force Awakens finally arrives and curiosity was able to lure in even the most salty man. Not to mention the possible joy of seeing Han, Luke and Leia on screen together again. TFA is a perfectly decent film. There were two glaring choices in this film. One, Han is killed. Two, Rey beats Kylo Ren at the end. All things considered we should not have been surprised what the internet had to say. Rey was a Mary Sue. Men who didn't even know what a Mary Sue was were even saying this.

The term “Mary Sue” was first coined in 1973. A young main character, usually a woman, who was portrayed as unreasonably gifted across every discipline: intellect, combat, the arts, etc. This character would often become respected (and maybe even loved) by main characters and would end the story by saving the day in heroic fashion.

You don't have to like Rey. You don't have to love her. Rey isn't even the greatest character ever developed, but come on! I wonderer if the people criticizing her even watched the movie. I heard criticism that Rey was too likable! Well, she's the protagonist. She's too pretty! That's a bad thing? She's too nice! She comes off really brash and naive actually. She's the greatest pilot ever! She flew once and not that well. Most of the criticism around Rey was disingenuous and petty as hell.

Many critics have taken the lazy route of she has no character arc or character, but that’s not a very observant take. Her yearning for family and her desperation for her parents to return, while understandable, made her vulnerable to Kylo Ren. Her loneliness made her ultimately vulnerable to anyone who would be nice to her. Now I understand there was no consequences for her faults. However, there can't be both criticism. She either doesn't have a personality, or, she has one, but doesn't suffer consequences for it.

“How could she fly the Millennium Falcon so well?” “How could she beat Kylo Ren when she’d never used a lightsaber before?” “How could she resist Kylo Ren’s interrogation?” The film answered most of these questions. Ironically, no one questioned the 8 year old Anakin Skywalker or the farm boy Luke Skywalker for being amazing or great at anything because of The Force.

She grew up defending herself in melee combat. Her quarterstaff is not a lightsaber, of course, but it was established early on that she has the instincts and the reflexes to hold her own in a fight. While I don't agree with Rey beating Kylo Ren I understand how it was accomplished. Pure, dumb luck. It was luck that Ren was physically and spiritually crippled during their confrontation. Not to mention he had the hots for you. Finn was able to hold him off mostly because Kylo was toying with him, but when he grew bored Finn ended up face first in the snow. No one questioned how Finn the janitor could wield a lightsaber.

Let's talk about Finn, or rather John Boyega. All things considered pretty lucky guy. He got a likable that he played well and got paid well. You wouldn't know it by listening to him. He complained bitterly. He attacked the fans. He attacked Disney. He attacked America. He got off Scott free with fandom. Most remember him with nothing but fondness. Maybe because he is black people feel slightly uncomfortable going after him. But, the women? No problem. Even when fans hate male characters, they talk about what they hate with nuance.

Daisy Ridley did her job and she went home. She carried on beautifully and respectfully with what she was given by the production team. That is all any actor can do. The same would apply to the girl who played Rose Tico. Yet, criticism of what was happening on screen started to bleed onto the actresses in real life.

Mark Hamill shit talked the Sequel Trilogy - fair, enough. But why did you sign on? It he because he needed a job? Hondo wasn't a great leader. I agree. But, countless people ended up losing their lives due to Poe because he refused to listen to the female authority around him. Where was the fandom with their logic bitterness scorecard? The majority of the criticism I heard (Literally several videos on Youtube) was criticism towards Hondo for not telling a newly demoted soldier all of her plans.

Anywho Rey has this new movie coming out...........okay. Not sure who wants to come back for it other than her. After TROS and the fans most co-stars seem good doing other things. OG characters are killed off. There is one person with stunning jet black hair, 6'3, plush naturally red lips, a big dick, freckles and a heroic run that she's in a dyad with that would make this whole movie worth it. Do I faith they'll do the right thing and pay Adam Driver whatever they need to to bring him back? No. Cause there is a little bit of an agenda. For some reason love in the Star Wars universe doesn't do very well, but for the woman it's none existent. The concept that a strong woman doesn't have to die alone seems odd to the very people that want equality for women. For example I saw this comment, "Rey Skywalker is her own character and her continuing story doesn’t have to revolve around Ben Solo. Daisy Ridley’s return shouldn’t be overshadowed by fan expectation over Adam Driver returning."

Yes, it does. This film needs to work. I cannot stress that enough. You know people want to see this film fail. Reylo isn't purely for sentimental reasons (I WOULD SEE MY DYAD REUNITED FOUR TIMES IN THEATRES) Reylo is the biggest marketing advantage Disney Star Wars has..... you knew that when Solo flopped. Do the smart thing, put these people on mute and give us a iconic fight fuck scene.

Rey also wear clothes appropriate with her environment and match the physical needs of what she needs to accomplish like her male peers. Logical and refreshing. I hear the men mostly complain about the lack of hot women in their fantasy.

We could also talk about the sexism Carrie Fisher faced from the not only the studio, but the fandom for the crime of getting older and gaining weight. Her in a metal bikini is already in the spank bank - she contributed enough.

Again, neither Carrie Fisher nor Daisy Ridley in a smart world could ever really own that. Anymore than the Rose Tico actress could. Worse, they could never really tell the Fanboys what they really think of them. I love me some Fanboys, I do, but they aren't a perfect group of people. They just criticism everyone's work like they are. We're suppose to ignore the giant dump they take on anything and everything that comes out. I genuinely think the people beyond The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy sought out to create a great story. To honor what came before. In many respect they did. They aren't George Lucas though.

There is legitimate criticism towards Disney for how it has handled the Star Wars franchise. Currently it can't exactly be be described as quality over quantity. The writers seem like they are writing for early 00s Disney Channel rather a complex space political fairytale. Characterization has not been wonderful. Again, it's not simple. While Disney has not steered the ship perfectly. I would argue there was an audience sitting in ill will and waiting to be disappointment.

[jedi-enthusiast]

Debunking the "The Jedi are Evil" Theory Made by The Film Theorists PT 6

Point 6 - The Jedi Left Shimi in Slavery

Continuing on, Matthew says this:

"In fact, the Jedi care so little about the relationship between parent and child, that in the Prequel trilogy Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan literally leave Anakin's mother on Tatooine to continue living in slavery in Episode 1. We're told that they take Anakin, but not his mother because they don't have the money to buy her freedom from Watto."

WRONG!

And, what's funny is, he plays the exact clip that shows this is wrong right after he makes this statement.

They didn't free her because Watto refused, likely because he didn't want to lose both his slaves in one day, but not because they didn't have enough money or wouldn't pay the price Watto set.

---

Matthew quote, continued:

"But then a decade goes by without him ever following up. At no point during the 10 year period did anyone bother to think- 'Hey, maybe we should, you know, go check on Anakin's mother to make sure she's alive or, I don't know, maybe go back to buy her freedom since we have the money to do it, and we've won the war, and her son happens to be the most powerful Force-user in history.'"

First of all, Qui-Gon fucking dies like the day after freeing Anakin--so he can't follow up--and Obi-Wan, for a nice chunk of time afterwards I'd say, is a little too busy dealing with the grief of losing his Master (or his "parent," since obviously Matthew thinks parental relationships are the only ones that matter), the mental turmoil of killing a Sith, and also the sheer whiplash of "holy shit I'm now responsible for a whole other human being, what do I do???"

Like, there's literally a whole thing in a book where Obi-Wan is like "does Anakin know how to swim???" so I think there were some more pressing matters on his mind than worrying about Shmi.

I will also say that in another video Matthew says that Shmi and Anakin were just fine as slaves because Watto is shown to "treat them well," so he can't really use both arguments in this situation. If Shmi was "just fine" in slavery, then why should the Jedi go back to check on her or free her?

Either she's fine and the Jedi have no reason to go check on her, or she's not fine and the Jedi need to.

One or the other, buddy.

Plus, only Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, and Anakin knew about Shmi. Qui-Gon dies, Obi-Wan is juggling enough things as is, and Anakin clearly never tells anyone else about his mother--so what was anyone else supposed to do about someone they didn't even know existed?

Second...you're getting your movies and also literally everything that happens mixed up.

The Jedi do not "win the war," a war fucking starts--which spreads them thin across the galaxy to the point that they can barely take care of the problems right under their noses without another fire starting somewhere else that they need to get to, so I doubt they'd have the time to go searching for Shmi. Plus, at the end of that war, the Jedi get fucking genocided...idk what you want them to do while they're getting murdered in the halls of their home.

Now, if you're talking about the mess on Naboo, that is over at the end of TPM--not in the "10 year span" you're talking about. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that, if Obi-Wan did go back to try and buy Shmi's freedom, that Watto's answer would be the same, and what would be the point of Obi-Wan going back a day after Watto already refused to ask the same question again?

And why isn't Padme held to the same standard?

Why aren't you asking why she--with more money, power, time, and resources--didn't go back to free Shmi?

Interesting double standard there.

---

Matthew quote continued:

"What makes the death of Anakin's mother all the more tragic, is that all of it could have been prevented. He reaches her just as she's in her dying breaths. Had he arrived days, or even hours earlier, his journey to Tatooine might not have ended with him having to bury her. The only reason that Anakin even knew about her is because he could sense her suffering."

Yeah, it could have been prevented...if Anakin had actually told anyone about his dreams.

In AotC Anakin mentions to Obi-Wan that he's been having dreams about his mother, but he doesn't elaborate. And when Obi-Wan tries to talk to him about those vague dreams that Anakin is telling him fuck-all about, Anakin switches the subject to Padme and doesn't bring it up to Obi-Wan again.

The Jedi are shown again and again to be extremely empathetic and, as I said before, they don't bar people from visiting their biological families if that's what they choose. If Anakin had actually told Obi-Wan "I've been having dreams of my mother dying on Tatooine and I can literally sense her pain and suffering," odds are that Obi-Wan would have encouraged him to go and check on her.

And it's made clear that Anakin was having those dreams for a while. His mother was gone for a month. If, at any point in time Anakin had actually told someone about his dreams, he probably could've gone to check on her earlier and would've been able to save her.

The only reason that Anakin wasn't supposed to go later on in the movie was because he was literally the sole person responsible for the safety of a very important Senator who people were actively trying to assassinate.

[mirrorofliterature]

me when people act like the prequel order was completely perfect and innocent and never did anything wrong, ever: *twitches with barely concealed rage*

like.

- the clones

- leaving Anakin's mum in slavery

- how they handled anakin

- letting Palpatine have unrestricted access to a child

- their moral absolutism

like. the prequels and original trilogy explicitly portray the Jedi order as flawed like I'm concerned for people's media literacy.

[marvelstars]

Nuance in Star Wars

There is some tendency in a lot of fandoms but also the SW fandom in particular that holds this belief that you can´t support "morally wrong characters because they reflect on your own morality" something I believe is really absurd not just because you can´t judge a person by the cartoons/movies/series they like but also because fiction itself doesn´t work that way, in fiction characters ARE supposed to have virtues and flaws, no matter if their actions are morally wrong or right and in a story like the prequel trilogy of star wars, which is supposed to be a tragedy and tragedies are all about fatal flaws, is practically a requeriment for the characters to be flawed, because something seriously went wrong to get the story to the way things were in A New Hope.

The Jedi Order was well meaning, were loyal to strong principles and tried their best during the prequel trilogy but they also grew arrogant in their possition of power after being unchallanged for centuries to the point they believed their own counsel that the sith were erradicated over evidence staring right at them in TPM and often they were compromised by senate politics, something the Sith used agaisn´t them to get their revenge on them and manipulated things in a way that made the Jedi complicit in supporting slave soldiers, the fact they didn´t even notice they did this says volumes because the soldiers were needed so it was neccesary and they were the "guardians of peace and justice" after all.

Obi-Wan was a model Jedi of the old jedi order, he genuinely loved being a Jedi, help people, follow the code and he is a great warrior but this fact also assured he didn´t know how to handle a student like Anakin, a former slave not raised at the temple, who believed in doing something out of compassion not just an abstract idea of good which Obi-Wan mistakenly took to meant Anakin didn´t care for justice or abstract concepts, he did, "he believed the biggest problem in the galaxy was that no one helps each other" so he was convinced he could be the one who could help but given Anakin grew up a slave on Tatooine, Anakin learned you can have the best principles in the world like the republic or Jedi did and yet not put them in practice to a real effect, see the republic ignoring slavery in the outer rim or leaving his mother behind because he was supposed to become a jedi without "attachments"

So principles don´t matter much if they don´t help to make the life of those subjected to them better in a real way, not just an abstract one and he called this compassion- unlimited love. Obi-Wan then teached Anakin to follow orders even or especially if they went agaisn´t Anakin´s povs because Obi-Wan thought Anakin´s main beliefs were wrong just like later he believed Luke´s beliefs were wrong, the difference being that he no longer had a hold over Luke like he did with Anakin. The result was that Anakin went from being someone sure of himself, strong willed and compassionate to become someone constantly doubting himself, expecting direction, becoming angry for not getting things done, Obi-Wan didn´t train Anakin to develop his own discerniment of right and wrong like Yoda did with Luke, this is why Obi-Wan said in the OT he didn´t train Anakin as well as Yoda did.

Vader and Anakin are the same person, they drive star wars as a narrative but they are the same person on very different mental spaces, ultimately Anakin is the person who believed he could change the system, save everyone else affected negatively by it and do so in a virtuos heroic manner if he was strong enough and had enough compassion and love in himself but he progressively not only stopped trusting his own sense of right and good, he believed power was more neccesary than love because power could get things done, he allowed others to tell him what he was supposed to think or do and began developing a growing anger over his apparent betrayal of everything good he ever wanted to do for those dear to him(leaving his mother which resulted in her death) but also the galaxy(Not being able to free the slaves and later slaving himself to Palpatine).

Vader is the pessimist, nihilist Anakin who got convinced in the end there is no changing the system, jedi and sith are equally corrupt, the end justifies the means, he will never stop being a slave, you only can join the system and control it to do your own thing, you can´t save anyone, just try to keep them alive a little bit more and ironically Vader in his distant and cold judment with no apparent attachments, see him attacking Ahsoka and Luke out of duty or emotions driving his character, resembles way more the Jedi the old order expected Anakin to be than Anakin himself ever did because the Jedi never appreciated the honest good, compassion and love Anakin had within himself, the good Padme and Luke saw in him that saved the galaxy or the Jedi saw it as the incorrect way to do things so Anakin broke himself into trying to fit their mold until he became an emotionally distant half machine sith who destroyed the Jedi Order for the greater good of keeping his love alive and the republic/empire in one piece and the Jedi were acceptable sacrifices. This on itself is a tragedy.

The main difference between the good guys of the PT anf the OT is that OT character are not blind to their own flaws but they approach them in a day to day basis and don´t allow those flaws to change the person they were, always having hope they can get a better tomorrow with love and sacrifice. Luke and Leia didn´t love Han because he was flawless but because he showed them they could trust him to keep them safe and care for more than his own interest.

Star wars indeed is a story for kids with puppets but this doesnt mean it didn´t have nuances in their characters and we truly can´t call any character there flawless but that´s the point of the story. It isn´t about being flawless it´s about trying to do the good thing despite all the mistakes you have made along the way and all the flaws you may have and that never is too late to come back if you truly want to.