#the last Jedi discourse

[jonathanrogersartist]

Anyone else irritated by how both the lovers and haters of The Last Jedi seem to totally miss the point of the ending of Luke's storyline in that film? Haters ignore that Luke redeems himself for his mistakes and goes out with an epic final act that reaffirms the value of mythic stories and why we need heroes, and thus is an explicitly pro-Jedi moral. So Luke's whole story is about him rejecting the cynicism of old age and failure, and snaps out of that insufferable attitude that tries to paint all sides as equally bastardly. It's a story about WHY the fundamental ethos of Star Wars, the dichotomy of genuine good vs absolute evil represented by the Jedi as avatars of ultimate love, and the Sith/Snoke/Whatever as avatars of ultimate hate, is eternally relevant and something we need for spiritual nourishment during dark times. And.... the lovers ignore this too. They tend to latch onto Luke's bitter words from earlier in the movie about how the Jedi were a corrupt and hypocritical institution that needs to end. These kinds of people are passionately anti-Jedi, and LOOOOOOOOOOVE that for a few minutes, a canon SW movie was saying that they all suck. They also unironically take Kylo Ren's 'let the past die' mantra at face value and think that THIS is the moral of that movie. They look at the messages of past Star Wars with a kind of preening disgust, seeing it as childish and one-note at best, damaging and corrupting for society at large, at worst. It is what I'm going to call 'Knight Templar Syndrome.' I speculate that they think old things are automatically dumb or ignorant or worthless, and can only see it through the lens of 'how can I make this so irredeemably problematic in my brain, so that my rejection of it is therefore morally right, and makes me feel like a great person?' So of course, the Jedi as a representation of the wisdom and value of certain 'traditions' were doomed to be targeted by such transparently performative people. And for the first two hours of TLJ, these fans were having the time of their fuckin life. I am also pretty sure I've seen some posts where they take Yoda's words at the burning tree extremely literally, and think that entire scene is also about the need to destroy the past (the literal burning imagery does kinda give this impression at face-value, to be fair), and that Yoda's advice to Luke is "Move forward and never look back," when he is ACTUALLY saying "Move forward with all that you have learned, the good and bad, and make sure the good parts live on." It's little wonder then, that TLJ diehards are completely convinced that Rise of Skywalker ignored/insulted/changed everything about their darling. If they thought Last Jedi was about the need for an ideological scorched-earth, only to then watch Rise be about the reconciliation of the past with the future, then yup, their vicious reaction to it, rife with conspiracy theories, demonization of JJ and Terrio, etc. makes sense.

[artist-issues]

And besides, the Star Wars “Tropes” that you really should’ve been there for were all fulfilled!

“The Greater Good is Always Worth Fighting For”

Luke is already the kind of character who wants to be part of something good, and bigger than himself, in the first Star Wars movie. Ben Kenobi is an old man who’s still fighting the Empire and answering Princess distress calls in the face of terrible danger. The Skywalker Twins both jump in with both feet to combat an evil much bigger than themselves, at great personal cost, and they wind up teaching Han to do the same. By contrast, Han starts out selfish and fighting only for himself; both Luke and Leia criticize him for being unwilling to fight for something bigger and better, or caring only about money and his own skin. But all these characters grow to demonstrate, through their risks and their sacrifices, that the greater good is what’s constantly worth the fight. Just like how in The Last Jedi:

A former Stormtrooper, who was literally raised to see fighting as an aggressive duty only used to inflict pain, establish control, or crush spirits, learns that fighting is about saving what we love, not hurting what we hate. Even sacrificing himself “just to make them hurt” was portrayed as the wrong thing to do, because it wasn’t motivated by love; it was still motivated by a selfish feeling of hate and revenge.

Even after what Rey wants most—finding out that she means something to somebody who understands her (like Kylo Ren or her parents)—is taken away, she still chooses to go back for the Resistance and save them.

Luke starts the movie having lost all hope—in his own merit—and then ends it by choosing to sacrifice himself, not just for his friends in the Resistance, but for his nephew’s future.

DJ contrasts Rose Tico, who is willing to give up everything from her sister to her treasured keepsakes for the sake of the greater good. But DJ, on the other hand, won’t give up anything for anybody. Which is portrayed as a scumbag way to live.

Poe starts the movie fighting for the moment, not for the greater good. He thinks only as far as the next-big-hero-move. Then the movie teaches him that losing a battle in order to keep the greater good going is what leaders do, even if it means “failing” in the moment.

“Nobodies Can Make a Significant Difference”

Star Wars doesn’t open from the perspective of a Princess or a mighty warrior or even the protagonist: it opens from the perspective of a little maintenance droid and his fretful friend, who just so happen to be in the right place at the right time to carry galaxy-saving information. Luke is introduced as a farm boy, going nowhere. Not famous. Not noticed by the Empire. Han is a lowlife in a crappy-looking ship. Nobody expects him to save the day. Ben Kenobi’s former greatness is forgotten and barely mentioned; he’s introduced as a possibly-crazy old hermit. They’re all nobodies who make a huge difference when they do the next right thing. Just like how in The Last Jedi:

Rey is nobody. From nowhere. She wants to be somebody, from somewhere, and she’s just…not. No matter what she hopes or what she tries. She doesn’t JUST find out that her parents were nobody important and she has no great destiny: She starts out the movie “looking for my place in all this,” and learns that a) she’s not going to get to be Luke’s real apprentice and b) the best she can do, at the end of the movie, is just lift rocks out of the way. No big hero moment of bringing Luke Skywalker back, or Ben Solo back, or resurrecting the Jedi Order. Just…doing the next right thing. And it saves the day.

Poe, again, wants to be a big hero. He doesn’t just want to do the next right thing—he wants to win. But he’s slapped, sidelined, and ultimately taught that its not all about him.

Rose Tico is just a maintenance worker. She’s not a pilot, not a warrior, not a general or a Princess. She’s nobody important’ s daughter or granddaughter. But she saves Finn and demonstrates the most important theme of the movie.

BB-8, just one little droid, saves the heroes twice, first on Canto-Bight by bringing the ship, and then on the destroyed flagship when Poe and Rose are about to be overwhelmed.

Finn is just one wayward Stormtrooper, who used to be a janitor; a coward who keeps trying to run away. But it’s that cowardly janitor who faces down and defeats Phasma, one of the most feared faces of the First Order.

Luke chooses not to be the Legend who prevented more evil by killing a flawed legacy; instead, he chooses to be “what the next generation grows beyond.” Humble, modest, just a link in a greater chain.

Broom boy. He’s a slave in squalor, with nothing but stories of great deeds and heroic last stands…but he has the Force—the potential to make great changes when he grows up. There’s no better symbol for small things becoming significant than a child. Especially when you add the Force.

“There’s Always Hope For a Good Change”

This one’s easy. The original Rebellion exists based on this principal. Leia keeps fighting after Alderaan is destroyed and never gives up. Luke loses his family and instead of saying “the empire is too strong to beat” goes and fights them…and refuses to give up on the potential good in Han, the potential good in his father—heck, he even believes Ben Kenobi is a “great man” though everyone else scoffs. You could even argue that Han sees a potential softness in Leia that she’s too mission-focused to show all the time. The point is, the original Star Wars is full of characters who have every reason to give up on, or ignore, the hope for a good change. But instead, they go on hoping and acting in faith. Just like how in The Last Jedi:

Rey has seen Kylo Ren murder her only almost-father-figure, almost murder her only close friend, torture her, and promise to destroy her next almost-father-figure. He also reveals the most heartbreaking crushing of her dreams anyone ever could—she has no parents. But one glimpse of his turmoil and Rey refuses to give up on him. She won’t even kill him when she wakes up first after he refuses to turn good and promises to destroy her friends all over again.

Rey also won’t give up on Luke, and he’s super mean to her and won’t help her friends. But still, she only leaves him to try and inspire him by doing what he did; going and saving someone from the Dark Side.

Kylo Ren has no reason to believe his mother will love him, or accept him back, or ever come around to his point of view, but he still won’t kill her.

Poe gets half the Resistance fleet killed with his recklessness and almost destroys their escape plan, but Leia and even Holdo, who he led a mutiny against before she sacrificed her life, but refuse to give up on his potential as a leader. Holdo doesn’t even hold it against him before she dies. She looks at his tranquillized troublemaking self and tells Leia, “I like him.”

When Rose meets Finn she thinks he’s a hero, and meeting him makes her smile even though she’s grieving her sister—and then he destroys her idea of him by turning out to be a coward, lying to her, trying multiple times to escape, and believing that abusive planets like the one she grew up on are charming. But she still saves his life basically the whole movie long, and is always teaching him. Even though he insulted everything she believed in by trying to run away from a fight her sister died in.

Best example: by only coming back as a projection, Luke Skywalker managed to inspire his sister so she wouldn’t give up, inspire Rey to be a Jedi anyway even though he’d spent all their interactions discouraging that, and, most importantly—he made it impossible for Kylo Ren to murder another family member. By sacrificing himself, he made a difference, without letting his own death be one more thing Kylo Ren would have on his record of evilness. That’s better than what Ben a Kenobi did when he died in A New Hope, letting Vader strike him down. Instead, Luke doesn’t let Kylo Ren “strike him down.” He pretends to give him the option, just to buy his sister and the Resistance time. But he never really gave him the option to kill his own uncle. Because just like he believed there was hope for change in Anakin, he still believes there’s hope for change in Ben.

The Resistance ends the movie as thirty or so people, packed into one freighter with a juvenile Jedi, a broken lightsaber…and they’re still going to keep fighting. Heck, they just held off their enemies with busted mining speeders.

Those are the real Star Wars Tropes. Those things are the real “magic of Star Wars.”

And they’re beautifully portrayed at every angle in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. If all you’re looking for are

spaceships that follow specific rules

legendary magic-wielding family-reveals

practical-effect alien designs

all-powerful god-villains

a world that has an airtight canon that’s never been tampered with

then you never really got Star Wars. And I do accept criticism. And I will literally prove it further if anyone argues with me.

"Rian Johnson was mocking Star Wars fans for expecting Star Wars tropes in TLJ!"

No. Star Wars fans just happened to have the exact same flaw that the character, Rey, had: too much focus on her parents. That made her easy to relate to. But the whole point, down to the first movie she was introduced in (which WASN'T written by Rian Johnson) was that her parents were never important.

Star Wars fans should've expected that reveal. It was already set up. Maz literally tells Rey in the first movie to quit focusing so much on her parents. The filmmakers literally told you "she's wrong to put so much stock in who her parents are" in The Force Awakens. He just carried that theme on and y'all weren't ready for it because you never wanted to accept it in the first place.

=

Same thing with Snoke. Kylo Ren was introduced as a character who only wants one thing: strength. He thinks that strength will solve his emotional frailty. He's insecure. (Because reasons, to do with his family and their lack of faith in him.) Rey straight-up discovers that his biggest fear is "never being as strong as Darth Vader" and says it out loud so that the audience will get it.

You really think, when he was introduced as a character who believes killing mentor-father-figures will make him feel stronger and therefore more secure, that Snoke ever had a chance of getting past the second movie alive?

=

They straight-up introduced these characters with certain flaws, which lead to certain motives, which so happen to lead to different conclusions than common Star Wars fan theories.

Because that's the beauty of the Sequels. They acknowledge the legendary status of the Original Trilogy Tropes, then grow beyond those tropes.

Or at least. They were starting to. Until Star Wars fans threw continued hissy fits because they didn't want a story, they wanted a 💫 Star Wars Checklist Cleverly Disguised as a Story.💫

Then the powers-that-be were like "okay they're really not looking for a good story, just give 'em the checklist they were looking for." And you got exactly that in The Rise of Skywalker.

But Rian Johnson wasn't mocking you. He was just taking the next logical, compelling step in the previously-established arcs of well-written characters. And carrying on the Sequel's initial trademark of "appreciate the past by growing beyond it." Y'know. Like a good writer.

[sjbattleangel]

Special thanks to @agramuglia for inspiring this awful joke.

Everyone: "Steven Universe/She-Ra/Avatar: The Last Airbender/The Legend Of Korra/Star Wars: The Last Jedi/The Last Of Us/The Last Of Us Part II/The MCU/G. Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel run/Gail Simone's Birds Of Prey run/The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance/The Persona games/The Sandman/X-Men/The Simpsons/Everything by Dan Slott/Everything by Tom Taylor/Everything by Jason Aaron/Everything by Donny Cates/Everything by Brian Michael Bendis/Everything by Devin Grayson/Everything by Jonathan Hickman/Everything by Scott Snyder/Everything by James Tynion IV/Everything by Joshua Williamson, etc are anti-intellectual, regressive, pro-status quo, far-right Trojan Horses pretending to be "diverse and progressive" just so they can take advantage of naïve leftists."

Me: "No. That's Velma".

[banthaboyboba]

[aripithecus]

"Luke Skywalker was poorly written in The Last Jedi!", they whine. "You mean you're furious that he was written as a person with flaws and not some legendary perfect hero, is this not the very opposite of what you wanted for Rey?"

[coldgoldlazarus]

To me, the Jedi worshippers complaining about how Dave Filoni is ruining Star Wars, is sounding increasingly indistinguishable from all the chuds complaining about how Kathleen Kennedy is ruining Star Wars.

[thelaststarship]

it’s been five years since the last jedi came out and star wars discourse is still basically ruined. i mean, i feel like it’s been ruined since the prequels, but now it seems like star wars discussions online can be divided into a pre/post tlj timeline.

this has nothing to do with my opinion of the movie.

i mean you can’t fucking talk about the last jedi (or even star wars as a whole) on certain websites without inviting horrible replies and dms. how do you even talk about anything star wars now without risking someone verbally barging in with a “well tlj sucked so now that’s the direction this conversation is going in whether you like it or not.” you don’t.

on the other hand, we also now have folks who take criticisms of tentpole blockbusters personally. like they get offended on behalf of a megacorporation and a franchise worth billions because you didn’t like X new media.

none of this is new, but it feels like all that got turned up to 11 after tlj came out. and it’s been five years, so i kinda worry it’s not going away.

(andor was great, go watch that.)

[penny-anna]

like to me a lot of The Last Jedi discourse feels like if i mentioned really not liking The Courtship of Princess Leia and someone retorted with 'oh you just don't like that it said Han and Leia's romance wouldn't be smooth sailing post canon' and I'd be there like no that's a whole new sentence. i know what i didn't like about it and it wasn't that.

[artist-issues]

Also can I just point out that from the beginning, the door for Kylo Ren to return to the light and save the galaxy from the First Order was wide open?

I mean. The people who created the story with new Bad Guys? Had them blow up the entire government of Good Guys in the first movie. The former heroes are all tired and dropping like flies. The new ones are untried and afraid of the Force. Good Guys need a miracle, overnight, so they put all their hope on Luke Skywalker.

Without him, what do we have?

The scavenger - she’s strong with the Force.

The former Stormtrooper - he has insider’s info on the First Order.

A gutsy pilot - he’s got training and guts from legendary heroes.

Oh but you know who has all those helpful elements combined, if only he’d be on the Good Guys’ side?

(And as awesome as that gif is, they did not redeem him early enough in the third movie, so the door started slamming shut.)

[the-far-bright-center]

#LUKE WAS RIGHT #everybody is like love is what made ani fall BUT NO #love is what kept anakin sane #it is what kept him in the light for the longest time #that even palpy was like i gotta remove all his loved ones from the picture and isolate him #love brought anakin back to the light #LOVE saved the galaxy #Padme was right and so was luke (via @brilliantlymad)

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 it 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.

[aripithecus]

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[lizardsfromspace]

What's the worst thing about fandom in the last 20 years, and what's the worst thing about fandom that's always been true of it?

The worst thing about fandom in the last 20 years has been the incentivizing of fandom-as-conflict: not merely as a field in broader culture wars but as the field for endless intra-group battles.

This manifests in many ways: as seven hour videos complaining about The Last Jedi, as Twitter backlash campaigns, but also as stans defending their faves from any and all criticism real or imagined, as the endless boom-and-backlash cycle to any fandom meme or joke you see on Reddit, and as the drive for people to look for evidence other people discussing a thing they like are hysterical illiterate dolts, before anything else.

Or, in other words: a lot of fandoms are full of assholes these days, whose main interaction with fandom is using it as a reason to be an asshole, and to defend being an asshole. The actual “fandom” part of fandom no longer really exists for them. The discourse more or less is their fandom; someone whose main fandom activity is sharing videos about how Steven Universe is a fascist (?) isn’t in the Steven Universe fandom, they’re in the videos about how Steven Universe is a fascist (?) fandom. I mean, the chief fandom for many people is their side in the fandom war. What type of fanfic you write is secondary to what your affiliations are vis-a-vis battles over fanfiction

(One trend I've noticed is people who aren't at the stage where they only talk about what they hate and not what they love, but are at the stage where they can only talk about what they love in relation to what they hate. "I love this movie...and it proves this other movie is bullshit made by a hack". No ability to say just "I love this movie", period, end of sentence. This is how like two-thirds of Film Twitter talks about film, the remainder are all the grindhouse people going "man you've GOT to see Wrong Turn 5")

Another one, that I think is related, is that fandom’s become...more transitory, maybe? There’s Big Fandoms that are inescapable and then everything else feels like it’s here for a weekend and then it’s gone. And we’ve always had fandoms that endure and fandoms that vanish quickly, when the show runs short or turns out to be bad/boring, but we did use to have a lot of enduring if small fandoms for Okay shows most people hadn’t heard of and now you don’t really. Or they burn themselves out fast.

So we’ve reached this stage where fandoms are either so big they have seven hour long discourse videos, or they’re a smattering of fanart over the course of two weeks last August. But that isn’t really the fault of fans so much as modern media release schedules.

A lot of fandom activities of old are just...impossible now, with many shows? The slow build of speculation and fan works and in-jokes and theorizing and analysis simply can’t exist in a world where the premiere comes out the same day as the finale, and you can’t talk about the finale because you have no way of knowing if the person you’re talking to binged it all in one weekend or is still on episode four. That was the kind of thing that sustained the fandom of something that wasn’t a big hit, or even something that was. My fave fandom experience ever was watching the online Lost fandom wildly theorizing for all six years of Lost, and we’d never get “and what if the Smoke Monster is a dinosaur but only the head?” under a Netflix release model. Now at a base level, we either have shows nobody can discuss because nobody’s sure who’s seen or what, or shows where everyone just discusses the finale right away, and where you get One Week of Show and then a massive hiatus, which either kills all momentum or...drives fandom in the direction of hyper-analyzing everything and fighting because, well, what else is there to do? And that plus the outrage cycles of social media plus the fact that “man who yells at Star Wars” is now a viable career choice result in, well. *gestures upwards* All that

(Really, shout out to Cartoon Network for engineering the Steven Universe fandom to Be Like That through their inscrutable strategy of dropping episodes during one random week every five months or whatever)

As for something that's always been with it...cliques and a certain fannish elitism, like, that sees engaging with media in a fandom sense as more creative or analytical or intelligent than your average person. You see it now in the form of, like, people holding up fanfic above published fiction as more representative or authentic (I’ve seen more than one post on here strongly implying queer rep doesn’t exist in mainstream non-fic storytelling???), or going “well, we think about shows, unlike those normies watching sports”. But that was probably way more pronounced a thing in the past, in the 40-50s sci-fi fans were calling non-fans "mundanes" and calling themselves "slans" as an in-group signifier (a reference to a book with superintelligent psychic mutants known as slans). Like at the very least we should be happy no one’s calling non-fans “muggles” anymore. In the evolution from “mundane” to “muggle” to “normie” normie’s probably the least bad one

[jessequinnfirstofhername]

The Rules:

Every twenty-four hours there will be another round. After every round, the film in last place will be eliminated.

If there are multiple films tying for last place, there will be a special elimination round. In these rounds, every film in last place will be eliminated, even if all the films have tied equally.

When there are only two films remaining, they will face off against one another in a week-long poll to determine the victor.

If you feel that no mere Star Wars film deserves to win, then please hit the "No Star Wars *Film* Is As Good As ___!" option and reply to this post with the non-film piece of Star Wars media you wish to include in the poll. The non-film piece of Star Wars media with the highest 'write-in' votes will then be added to the poll in the next round. Welcome to the poll, Andor and Star Wars: The Clone Wars!

This is all for fun. Don’t take it too seriously ;)

Our next casualty: The Force Awakens, the film that launched a thousand Discourses (tm).

^^^My face when I see TFA-era Discourse (tm).

Without further ado: Round Four!

[stephantom]

The source material is too flimsy and inconsistent to bear this debate. Choose whatever interpretation you like. Choose multiple contradictory ones for different fanworks and different moods. Do not attempt to treat it like a logical and consistent reality, except for fun, and know that it’s an impossible task and that other people’s attempted explanations (for fun) do not necessarily reflect on their actual beliefs about reality.

I feel like the ‘the Jedi were too strict with Anakin and it was abusive and that’s why he fell!’ is telling of a certain … power fantasy some Star Wars fans have.

Because Anakin didn’t have to be a Jedi. We know he could’ve left the Order, because that’s what Dooku did. The man’s the most skilled fighter pilot of his era, a capable combatant, has experience with diplomacy, has worked as a bodyguard, etc, etc, he would not even remotely struggle to find work, even without taking into account that his wife is a wealthy senator who could easily support him. Hell, while he’d probably have to give up his lightsaber, it’s not like it’d be impossible for him to build another one – it isn’t illegal for a non-Jedi to own a lightsaber, and it’s clearly possible to acquire lightsaber crystals outside of the Order because, again, Dooku has a lightsaber. It’s not even like he’d have to give up his friendship with Obi-Wan – Obi-Wan has friends who aren’t Jedi, he has a whole bunch of them. So does Yoda.

(Hell, it’s not even like non-Jedi aren’t allowed to use the Force. As Palpatine points out in the Revenge of the Sith novelisation, it’s not even technically illegal to be a Sith Lord.)

The only reason Anakin can’t leave the Order is because he doesn’t want to. He wants everything: He wants the power, prestige, excitement, and community the Jedi offer, but he also wants to not have to follow their rules. 

And I think for quite a lot of people that’s a very relatable thing, right? We want to have it all. The fantasy of being a cool Jedi is, for a lot of people, ruined by the addendum that there are things you would have to forego to do that. That’s one reason why the idea of Grey Jedi, which fully is just that ‘you can have your cake and fuck it too’ is so appealing to so many fans.

But that’s not what life is like, in reality or in fiction. And Anakin’s fall brings that crashing in: He tries to have everything, and he ends up with nothing. Less than nothing, because at the end of it, not only does he not have any of the things he wanted in the first place, but he’s also lost his freedom (because let’s make no mistake, as much of a terrible, gleeful executor of cruelty and misery as he is as Vader, he is also Palpatine’s slave) and his body.

It’s easy and in a way quite appealing to shift the blame elsewhere and go “Well, he could’ve had it all, but people more powerful than him stopped him from doing so.”

[pitynostars]

i think what massively turns me off this season is 99% of it is fandom bait. the susan teases. the master teases. mrs flood. the copy/pasted scene from the end of the world in space babies. the way RTD talks about the finale being such a spectacle and then it's just the empty universe from flux copy/pasted. the ruby is normal reveal copy/pasted from last jedi.

and none of it really matters or goes anywhere or has any emotional depth. it's all just stuff he knows fandom will latch onto and talk about and theorise and argue over. it makes it feel like the whole thing was written with the audience's reaction in mind, what would generate the most ragebait/discourse to keep people talking about the show. rather than having any coherent or interesting narrative it feels like endless clickbait shit designed to just keep u watching In Case it all actually means something. like with the landscape around media atm... i get it i guess. but it also just means it. sucks ??