Hey have we considered that the reason that one guy in the Prequels was really chill about offering some Jedi death sticks isn't some massive conspiracy that the Jedi are all doing massive amounts of drugs, or even that he didn't realize they were Jedi, but instead that arresting people for non-violent drug offenses is fucking evil and the Jedi aren't cops? And the people of Coruscant generally know that as long as they're not killing people the Jedi aren't actually interested in fucking them over?

In The Clone Wars season 2 episode 22 "Lethal Trackdown"-- written by George Lucas, Dave Filoni, and Drew Z. Greensburg -- we clearly see Jedi Master Plo Koon and Padawan Ahsoka Tano use the Force to evade paying the public transit fare on Coruscant -- after checking to make sure that the transit droid isn't going to catch them. There's no plot reason for them to skip the fare, they just do it out of seemingly habit.

The Jedi do not give a fuck about non-violent crimes against the state -- they are actively committing those crimes themselves.

Deathstick dealers get mind-trick-rehab as a harm reduction tool.

I want to emphasize that not only is there no plot-driven reason for them to jump the fare, but that neither of them even discuss what they're about to do. No patting themselves down for passes or change.

The equivalent of an Arch Bishop and a Novitiate Nun just decided to commit "crimes" together without hesitation.

Plo Koon doesn't even question if Ahsoka knows what to do! Force Fare Evasion 101 is obviously an Initiate-level class.

Do you see my vision -- tiny precious Jedi initiates who are made of goodness and light, and are also the bane of their creche-masters and the local public transit authority. The children yearn for the rails. Nothing can stop them from what they crave.

I see your vision, & I raise you:

There's not an official Force-based Fare Evasions class, because the Masters feel it would be setting a bad example for impressionable younglings who, after all, will have an entire apprenticeship in which they'll be practicing petty crimes & misdemeanors, & the justification thereof. Besides, they like a little plausible deniability when the Transit Authority occasionally comes to complain.

What there is, however, is an unofficial, hands-on seminar in the subject, taught by Senior Padawans when it's their turn to take a group of Initiates on a "field trip" to Umate Monument Plaza. Most Padawans given this assignment don't need to be explicitly told that this is the purpose of said field trip, because most of them remember their own Initiate trip.

Anakin did not know about this tradition. When Obi-Wan asked him if any of the kids had trouble with the skill & got a blank expression for his trouble, he came to the unfortunate realization that he had ¹failed to teach his Padawan a critical life skill, & ²he had not overseen his last field trip. Hawk-Bat Clan, however, felt that they were the most fortunate group of Initiates to ever walk the corridors of the Temple, because they got not only a 2nd field trip, but also milkshakes from a seedy diner out of the deal. Not to mention a new non-Jedi friend.

i've (helped) say it before. jedi commit traffic crimes like it's their job (it is)

I have to admit, the victim-blaming directed at Fives to absolve Anakin for how he let down a victim of violation—and gaslit him to protect Palpatine—is more exhausting than Anakin worshippers seem to realize. The way they dismiss Fives’ trauma, framing him as ‘obviously not in his right mind,’ is especially draining. I don’t think they care about trauma at all unless it’s a convenient narrative device to absolve their favorite space fascist.

You know who else gets labeled ‘hysterical’ and ‘irrational’ when they try to share their experiences? Think carefully—you’ll figure it out.

If you weaponize Anakin’s trauma for fascist apologia while dismissing the trauma of others—especially the trauma caused by Anakin himself, rooted in his obsession with control—you are human garbage. Period.

And for the record, your enjoyment of your favorite space opera character isn’t the center of the universe. A husband choking his pregnant wife should never be reduced to a narrative device for his character development.

That's why Anakin worshippers tend to suck.

I'm venting; this is not an invitation to 'acshually' me.

Someone: “if the Obi-Wan and Yoda had just shown Anakin his kids immediately after he fell he totally would’ve come back immediately and been good again since he just wanted a family. We know this because he saved Luke in ROTJ”

Me: …you will never guess who Anakin almost killed by strangling his very pregnant wife

On a serious (and probably oversimplistic) note: The strangling wife trope goes back to Othello, and presumably even further, and is the legacy of a host of racist imagery. Anakin-cannot-do-anything-wrong fans are in fact the long-awaited proof that had Othello been written as a white man instead of a caricature of a brown man everybody would’ve been happy to justify him killing Desdemona (instead of just some people).

In this essay I will…

I retcon/headcanon Jedi humor as lighthearted, effortless, and playful, rooted in how amusing, almost endearing, dualistic thinking and the illusion of separation are once you've seen through it.

Avoiding attachments isn't a strict decree (or moral obligation) that's hard to follow. It's a running joke, and the punchline is always the same: you don't need to hold on in the first place. You can't lose what's connected.

It's a classic. No need to rush it. It'll land.

“Average Jedi experiences 3 serious struggles with attachment yearly” factoid actually false. Anakins georg, who experienced 10,000 serious struggles with attachment daily, was an outlier who should never have been counted.

I feel like people miss the point of the "war is bad" message

What it's supposed to mean is that war is terrible, it's destructive, it ruins lives, it leaves scars, and you should only partake in it when there are no other options, because even if you win, even if you survive, you will not be the same, which is why the phrase used to be more commonly known as "war is hell"

But "war is bad" seems to have been construed by people in fandom (and more worryingly in real life too) into "any fighting is bad, if you fight you're morally terrible and impure, you should not fight at all, no matter what"

And that's almost never the point of "War is Bad" works

Works like lotr, atla, transformers, the clone wars, etc all have themes on how horrible war is, but they categorically do not say it is wrong to fight, what they say is usually along the lines of "war is terrible, and what makes it so terrible is that we have no choice but to fight, it would be ideal if we didn't have to fight at all, but we must fight, because not fighting is not an option, because not fighting, not opposing tyranny, conquest, and evil only allows those things to exist unimpeded"

In Star Wars, I think the “any fighting is bad” often falls out of well intentioned interpretations of Luke tossing away his lightsaber in ROTJ. It can look like it’s saying:

But crucially, Sidious is killed bare moments later, by Anakin, and it is a good thing. The best thing. It’s paralleled with the rebellion blowing up the second Death Star, a weapon of mass genocide. These are both violent acts that result in the death of one or many people, which the narrative informs us are good. Anakin killing Sidious is his return to Jedi-hood as much as Luke not killing Vader is his commitment to Jedi-hood.

So why does the seeming contradiction work?

Because it’s not just about what the characters do, it’s about why. Star Wars cares deeply about motivations.

Luke

When Luke nearly kills Vader, he is doing it because he is angry, and because he hates Vader for threatening Leia and for cutting off his hand. Vader is suddenly helpless before him, and Luke considers it. Considers taking revenge, perhaps justifying it to himself that Vader is still dangerous. But he steps back, looks at his hand not as an injury to himself, but in combination with Vader’s missing arm as a warning of the cycle of violence that Luke too is vulnerable to becoming a part of. It is not that killing to prevent harm is bad, it is that, for Luke, to kill Vader in this moment would be to kill a helpless man for revenge. Luke realizes the state he is in at that moment is so vulnerable to that cycle of violence that he cannot even hold a weapon, and remain himself. Remain a Jedi.

Anakin

Vader, on the other hand, has been waiting to either kill Luke or be killed by him—he has not made a strong decision either way because the good in him has been stirred but not enough, not yet, because he is still attached to his own life and to Sidious. He believes the victor of their fight will inevitably go on to serve Sidious, no matter what he does. Inaction and indecision have always plagued Anakin. When he finally—at the very last instant possible—chooses to save Luke, his intentions are pure. He really, truly, wants Luke to live, even if it means that Anakin will die in the effort. He lets go of—detaches himself from—Sidious, his own desire to live forever, and even the possibility of being able to spend time with Luke, and he walks into the lightning to save Luke’s life. Save Luke happens to require killing Sidious, but Anakin is not killing Sidious because he wants revenge for the past, or even because he is angry with him for hurting Luke. It is simply the path to saving Luke. Anakin is, for the first time in a long time, finally escaping, nay ending, a cycle of violence. The fact a little fighting (yeeting) is required to accomplish that makes it no less the action of a Jedi.

Intention matters in Star Wars. Luke has his father’s flaw, and he must do something extreme to save himself from his father’s fate. He must throw away the weapon entirely, because he is not capable of using it to defend, in that moment. Only to express anger or exact revenge. Other Jedi might have been able to safely make other choices on the Death Star. Not everyone would have had to toss their lightsaber away: some could have merely turned it off, others could have turned it to fight Sidious, the person who was not helpless, and others still would never have gotten caught up in anger on the first place.

There was never only one choice, one way to be a Jedi. Recall if you will,

[ID: screenshot of Obi-Wan on the lava planet Mustafar in revenge of the Sith as he says the line, “only a Sith deals in absolutes.” Obi-Wan is framed standing next to a sun partly hidden behind clouds. Below the image that same line is written in Curly cursive text. End ID]

if Star Wars had the internet Anakin would fall down an alt right pipeline so fast it’s not even funny. thought 1 is this doesn’t change the plot at all cuz he already said shit like that. thought 2 is him accidentally confessing to mass murder by posting to the wrong account

A Partial Fix-it AU based on Thought 2

Picture this. It starts as your regular crack filled social media AU, clones and jedi posting things, laughing, whatever. They’re doing it because the propaganda people thought it would be a good idea, but they are generally having fun with it, maybe there are some plans to use the exposure for good things like accountability and public sympathy etc. Maybe incorporate some actual scenes so that’s available as an option for later in the plot, or maybe it’s all done as documentation/social media format.

Anakin’s public account is popular for him being hot and ‘cause of existing “Hero with no Fear” propaganda. He mostly posts action shots taken by r2 or the 501st or activities with Ahsoka, nothing particularly deep, just fulfilling the assignment. Most of the jedi do a bit more activist photography, highlighting damage and deaths, or places in need of aid, but Anakin’s account isn’t far out of the norm, except in how much attention it gets.

Gonna start saying unhinged shit about the twins like “leia inherited her sass from dooku" and "luke got his smile from breha organa”

I was clearly limiting myself. Grogu gets his taste in frogs from Tarre Vizsla

Jango Fett obviously inherited his hatred for Jedi from Sargent Slick

Luke inherited his kindness from Mon Mothma, him mum. and Leia got her intelligence from Admiral Akbar, her father.

Anakin got his temper from his paternal grandparents, Gardulla the Hutt and Darth Plagueis

#star wars#boba inherited his chaos#from his first interaction with Obi-Wan#and he never recovered#also from his mother#Ashoka

@miresandmanticores you get it

also Ahsoka got her blue stripes from Anakin's eyes, duh. the white on her montrals is from dooku's hair being white when he got old

It's never not hilarious how The Clone Wars Season 3 Episode 7 "Assassin" is basically just "what Anakin should have done"

Like aside from the obvious-that Ahsoka actually talks to Yoda about what she's having visions of-there's also the fact that she doesn't avoid the visions either

In a bit that was cut (albeit still remains in most novelizations) from the final version of ROTS, Anakin stops sleeping altogether in order to stop experiencing visions (although I think you can still get the basics of this across in the final version of the film since we never see him experiencing more visions)

Assassin shows us why this was precisely a wrong move

Throughout the episode Ahsoka either meditates on her vision or experiences new ones as she sleeps, the results being the visions became clearer or they changed because of Ahsoka's actions, ultimately resulting in the vision not coming true

So basically if Anakin hadn't been all "gotta avoid things that make me uncomfortable!" (Or y'know just listen to Yoda's correct advice) and worked through the visions he would have either changed them or gotten a clearer picture

Wait wait wait lmaooo that completely turns the “he hadn’t slept in days of course his judgement was off” around (not even to mention the fact if you’re a couple nights of missed sleep away from mass murder that’s already a problem). It’s not that he couldn’t sleep from nightmares/insomnia, it’s that he deliberately chose not to. Bro what

Intentionally stopping sleeping is a Sith trait by the way. It’s their whole defiance of nature and constant paranoia against betrayal thing. Plagueis and Tenebrous both only learned the skill of never sleeping at all as Sith masters (Sidious too I think). Truly Anakin’s was speedrunning

Gonna start saying unhinged shit about the twins like “leia inherited her sass from dooku" and "luke got his smile from breha organa”

I was clearly limiting myself. Grogu gets his taste in frogs from Tarre Vizsla

Jango Fett obviously inherited his hatred for Jedi from Sargent Slick

Luke inherited his kindness from Mon Mothma, him mum. and Leia got her intelligence from Admiral Akbar, her father.

Anakin got his temper from his paternal grandparents, Gardulla the Hutt and Darth Plagueis

Anakin: *brags about never listening to the Council* Padmé:

MEANWHILE, THE JEDI:

The entire Jedi Order: “ 🧡✨Let’s validate Anakin’s lessons and his methods, let’s praise him for Ahsoka’s qualities, let’s praise Ahsoka for being a credit to his teachings, let’s encourage them both to rely on each other and trust each other, and let’s even praise Artoo for the same things while we’re at it. ✨🧡” 

Jedi neutrality in TPM comes not at all from not taking sides. They get there and pick a side in under five minutes. They are 100% team Naboo. No, their neutrality, and their cultural moral authority, comes from not having a stake in this fight. They're not mixed up in the trade federation. They don't have personal ties with the Naboo. They don't stand to benefit or to lose from the success of either party. They can just show up and say, hey, just decided you guys suck. And no one can accuse them of being secretly married to the Naboo queen or having offshore investments in the Lake country, or whatever completely hypothetical thing a person might have going on that would hypothetically compromise that neutrality

This also gets at the heart of all the “the Jedi should just leave the Republic” stuff more than debates that have been had a thousand times about how much being in cooperation with the republic helps or limits the work the Jedi do.

Being a Jedi is getting in everyone’s business. Meeting people and communities. Going to new places. Being doggedly persistent. Keeping to your commitments. Resisting threats and coercion. Refusing to give up. Investigating. Learning. Teaching. Fighting and running and talking and sticking your nose places people don’t want it. Helping, to the exclusion of all other ambitions. Leaving that trail of kindness everywhere you go because you’ve trained that instinct your entire life and you can’t stop now. Even if you could, you wouldn’t want to.

To be a Jedi is to be present, active, involved.

And you can’t be involved if you fuck off to do your own thing whenever the senator of Naboo is in the vicinity it gets hard.

I firmly believe that unfortunately for everyone, Obi-Wan and Anakin's entire sense of humor when they're together should consist of,

One of them: *says something mildly fucked up but overall pretty funny*

The other: "that's soo fucked up, why would you say that??" *says something slightly more fucked up but also slightly less funny*

The first one: "uggh you're useless" *says something more fucked up and not funny at all*

The other: *laughs and continues to up the fucked-up-ness ante*

Third person in the room with them: *has gotten progressively more worried/annoyed/straight up uncomfortable (depending on who that person is)*

Obi-Wan & Anakin: *notices the third person is uncomfortable*

Obi-Wan & Anakin: *starts saying fucked up things again but this time specifically targeted to make the other person more uncomfortable*

Mace Windu's sense of humor on the other hand consists of sideye-ing anyone who is even mildly sarcastic in his presence like, "do you wanna rephrase/retone/reevaluate that before I have to actually assign you real therapy and/or remedial courses in diplomacy/etiquette/ethics?" and then moving on as though nothing happened

As you can imagine this makes putting him in a room with Anakin and Obi-Wan interesting, as they keep upping the ante and he's just sitting there like "the only way I will deign to respond to any of this is if either one of you asks me directly in simple clear words for professional help," and obviously Anakin and Obi-Wan can never do that because that would mean they lose

By the way the first part of this post is fully cannon and can be observed in the brain worm episode

Admittedly Obi-Wan is doing most of the heavy lifting in this case, but the principle holds true

“Character fell because they just wanted to protect people” well yeah cool that’s neat except for how you don’t fall because of wanting to protect people. You fall because of wanting keep people for yourself (i wonder why slavery is a repeated backdrop and plot element…). That’s why the dark side never does anyone any good—it’s not about big emotions. When you fall, it’s about your decisions. Falling is about your motivations and your decisions becoming totally and completely selfish, about abandoning any allegiance to other people and to a wider society of people.

Or, you know, just Anakin’s entire prequels arc, how he betrays all of shmi’s values to take revenge for her death, how in rots he hurts. Every. Single. Person. he would’ve died and/or killed for literally the day before.

Padme.

his unborn children.

Obi-Wan.

the Jedi.

the younglings.

the clones.

Ahsoka.

every single person in the republic and beyond.

even the version of Palpatine he believed in—the caring indulgent chancellor who just wanted what’s best for the republic and who Anakin nearly died to rescue a day ago—is betrayed in the first five seconds of his fall.

As long as true protection is your motivation and decision, you have not fallen.

By the way this is also Anakin's arc in the original trilogy:

As soon as protecting Luke becomes his true motivation, he is no longer fallen.