"The Force. Let me show you how strong it is."

So skeleton crew, eh?

the "funny-kids-adventure" is going to be the star wars story that finally handles the whole disability/inclusion/ableism theme in a realistic and touching and realistic way? "She doesn't have the patience for it" is such a gut punch! To feel like you are lesser even for your best (only) friend, always having to be useful and do as they say... Or even just.. not be a burden. Because "sometimes her augs just get bad but she's fine" seems attentive, but actually she is not fine! She needs maintenance! But because the able-bodied don't need as much time to recover or as much rest or a more intense maintenance, they wouldn't even think about it - because she has always been finde shortly after it... Because if I am not ok and fun and capable and joyful and the very best I can be then I might not be the first choice to hang around anymore.. or even any choice at all

But also "I don't have spider legs like you" just right after that - and the realization that maybe I am not as good a friend as I thought I was and maybe all the talk about how "you're not different, you're better" might just be a toxic pile of positivity that is just not helpful - because we are different from each other and it is important to see all the differences to see as assets, but also to see and address the challenges that brings.. because "you can't just tell me I am amazing and can do it and then I magically can!" That's not how this works.. and why do I have to do all the work anyways? I am amazing at adaptation because I have to be, not because I want to! It's exhausting and I wish I wish so hard that for once the responsibility would not be on my tiny little shoulders!

I came for the cute elephant and the day-dreaming jedi-wannabe and I fell in love with the self-sufficient rebel biker and her tech-savy girlfriend, but I stayed for the heart wrenching realization that the world is a dark place and your sheltered upbringing cannot shield you forever because ignorance is not in fact bliss and why do some kids have to fight every day when their home is supposed to be the same as ours and why are we not helping them and instead isolating ourselves and sitting on a dragon hoards worth of credits while the galaxy is once again falling into ruin, just like we have witnessed in the past and just like then we just do nothing about it and let the droids and the supervisors control our lives.. and I know our parents love us and only want what's best for us, but how can we live under in this "perfect" bubble this wonderfully boring and ordered world with stable lives and jobs and nothing to worry about, when there is adventure outside? And how could we just seek out adventure when there is all this suffering and these worlds and people who could live so much better if not for the pirates and Mega-Corps and the looming dark forces of totalitarian terror and their darwinistic capitalistic selfishness and exploitation

Ugh I am not feeling normal about this

darth maul and padme amidala: discarded pawns

Jedi are absolute adrenaline junkies at their hearts of hearts and I respect that.

I’m sorry @merlyn-bane but your tags passed the peer review because they make the idea outright beautiful

feel a little insane when i think about hera falling in love with kanan.

like. kanan is intrigued by her and attracted to her from the beginning. i mean he's into her from the second he hears her voice. and he's known her a few days max, and he's already thinking to himself, "looking at her in the pilot's chair now, he determined he'd follow her anywhere." like okay lover boy!!!!!

but hera is on a mission when she meets him. and at first, she didn't even intend to recruit him, much less to get to know him, even as a friend: "people with the will to stand up to the empire were worth knowing. but then she remembered that this wasn't a recruiting trip. she needed to keep after her objective. maybe in the next lifetime, pal."

but when things shift and she sees a different side to kanan that has her reconsidering bringing him on board, she knows that he's into her. she knows that he's flirting, and she lets it slide, because she thinks he'll get over it: "he was smitten with her, she could tell - and she was all right with that too. she didn't want to tell him that her war had already begun, and that in war, there was no time for anything else. he would probably understand that eventually."

she makes it very clear that she isn't looking for intimate companionship, that he's being brought on as crew, and nothing more. for her the mission comes first. which also makes it very clear that she never meant to fall for him. but she did!!!

the mission, the fight, the rebellion is still first for her, of course. and from conversations they have in rebels, it seems like hera never let herself think very much about a definitive future for them (because how can they plan for a safe and happy and secure future when the empire is still in power?).

but she opened up to him, opened her heart to him, even after all the personal heartbreak she's already been through. even just becoming friends with him, when he was just supposed to be a helping hand. i doubt it took much for kanan to move from physical attraction to real true feelings for her. but for hera that must have been so much harder to let herself fall. especially when she never meant to fall for him in the first place. and thinking about how hard she must have fallen for him, to get to the point where she would enter a relationship with him in the midst of wartime.

and for them to have built such a strong friendship, in order to then enter such a profound, trusting, intimate, loving partnership. from rebels, we can tell they're equals. they communicate with each other incredibly well; they trust each other; they know that the other is competent and capable.

and i just think that hera finding her person, realizing she's fallen in love with him, and then allowing herself to be in love with him, is just so special and beautiful.

(also thinking about how it took strength and bravery for her to put her heart on the line like that, to fall for him so deeply, and then to have that torn away from her but we don't need to talk about that)

I think that Bo-Katan's attitude towards Satine - particularly her anger at Satine's death despite having been involved with Death Watch (which I have often seen described as hypocrisy) - makes a lot more sense if you think about it in the same terms as Brutus' "not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more" line from Julius Caesar (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, III.II. 22).

By that I mean that Bo-Katan, like Brutus, fully believes that the awful things she's doing are for the benefit of her state and people, and that she can square off the possibility of hurting her sister because she honestly thinks that it would ultimately lead to a better Mandalore. It isn't that she wants to do it but rather that, in her mind, she has to.

"As Caesar loved me, I weep for him [...] but, as he was ambitious, I slew him" (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, III.II. 24-27). These two things are not contradictory in Brutus' mind; he can mourn Caesar because he loved him despite having been the one to kill him, because one of those things is personal and the other is politics and so they have no bearing on each other, therefore these two sentiments can co-exist. Brutus loved Caesar-the-friend and hated Caesar-the-dictator, and as there was no way for him to separate the two in practice, he did what he believed he had to do.

And that is precisely the kind of thought process that would allow Bo-Katan to be sad and angry about Satine's death despite having contributed to the circumstances that brought about that outcome. And that isn't so much hypocrisy as it is cognitive dissonance, a conflicting sense of duty, and a hell of a lot of compartmentalisation. Because just as Brutus hated dictator-Caesar but loved Caesar himself, Bo-Katan hated the pacifist duchess of Mandalore but still loved her big sister - it was just unfortunate that there was no way to hurt one but not the other.

I actually think its kinda the opposite. Now before I start I'm not disagreeing for disagreeing's sake. I love your Shakespeare/ Star Wars comparisons and I do think a lot of people are being purposefully dense about the Kryzes (I'm even writing a Bo-Katan post that's inspired by one of yours rn so please don't take me the wrong way). For Brutus, there was no other way it could have ended because of what you said. There is a sort of inevitability to it. Ceaser the dictator had to fall for Rome to thrive. However, Satine didn't have to die because the Fall of Mandalore isn't about Satine and Mandalore- it's about Obi-Wan and Maul. Satine wasn't martyred. Satine was fridged. Mandalore, Death Watch, and Satine were all pawns in Maul's revenge. Death Watch (and Bo-Katan to some extent) was never the one stabbing Satine, she was the knife used to stab Satine. I think at the end of the day that's one of the things that keeps her up at night. Satine wouldn't have died if they didn't bring Maul into it. She didn't like that Maul was involved in the plan in the beginning, but she didn't stop him. Think about it. Maul did all of this to see Obi-Wan fall. The song for when Satine dies is literally called "Darth Maul Breaks Obi-Wan". Narratively speaking the Fall of Mandalore is not about Mandalore nor the Duchess of Mandalore. It's about the Duchess of Mandalore's lover and his enemy. It's also the reason why Bo blaming Obi-Wan makes sense. It's not about Satine. Darth Maul killed Satine to get to Obi-Wan. The entire system of Mandalore is a casualty because of Maul's vengeance against Obi-Wan. To Bo-Katan, Obi-Wan is part of (if not) the reason why Satine died. I think if the original plan (DW uses Maul to overthrow Satine, then kills the Sith) was executed properly and Satine died bc of that, then it would make the Kryzes similar to Brutus and Ceaser.

Having craaaazy Padmé Amidala thoughts this night of nights

Like what if you were fourteen and you were the painted figurehead set atop your planet’s corrupt bureaucracy. And not only are you fourteen and using a grown woman’s voice (a voice which is not your own) to start wars, but your only friends are girls who were handpicked to die for you. And they each wear your face and you wear theirs. And that face opens it’s mouth and soldiers die.

And then you are twenty four, and you face has been scrubbed clean of the red and white paint (a new girl has been painted into your place) and you have learned how to speak in your own voice. And though your voice echoes around the galaxy nobody listens, and soldiers die.

And what if you are twenty seven, and your husband has killed a child to save you? What if he has killed a dozen? What if he has fought a whole war fuelled by the idea of adoring you — whatever you are?

And when you discover this you tell him you do not know him anymore, and you tell him he is breaking your heart, but he does not listen. And because he is angry and afraid (like a child, which you never were) he closes his fist around your throat so tightly that you cannot speak.

And once you are dead your memory is polished and gilded in his mind, enshrined atop the mountain of his regret and self-hatred until you are a figurehead once again. And this figurehead girl, who wears your face but does not speak in your voice, whispers comfort in Vader’s ear that it is worth it, and people die.

Star Wars Rebels had an entire episode dedicated to the co-existence of the Jedi alongside other Force traditions.

From Legends of the Lasat:

When they unexpectedly meet more Lasat survivors, one of whom is a wise woman, Kanan takes this opportunity to teach his padawan that theirs is not the only way to experience the Force; so when Ezra seeks Kanan's permission to participate in the Lasat ritual, he grants it.

Kanan and Ezra later assist Zeb in channeling the Force/Ashla as he leads them through the star cluster.

Kanan, a temple-raised Jedi, was open to this other Force tradition, and he both participated in it and encouraged his padawan to do so, too, deferring to the Lasat for whatever needed to be done. By doing this, the Jedi were able to support Zeb as he moved from fear to faith (from unbelief to belief within his own belief system) and as he found hope and healing among his people.

For this and for so many other reasons, it’s a really beautiful episode.

do you ever wonder how ahsoka saw her childhood. do you ever wonder if she thought it ended the day she stepped off that ship and met anakin for the first time. do you ever wonder if she went back to the temple and felt too old for her bones. do you ever wonder if she told a joke she’d heard anakin or rex make to someone who’s the age she was when the war started thinking it’s fine, it’s normal, everyone lives like this, everyone knows what i mean only to be confronted with quiet horror. do you ever wonder if ahsoka didn’t think she was a child anymore because after the thirteenth time you see someone torn to pieces by shrapnel you can’t think that way anymore or you’ll go insane. do you ever wonder if she knew how young she was.

Whenever I think about the dark side and how Star Wars talks about it, it's never as small as having a temper or being prideful

It's those character flaws to an extreme

It's the loss of control. The loss of stability. The loss of who you really wanted to be. It's everything you would be if you sacrificed any kind of restraint

No one's turn to the dark side has ever been treated as a freeing experience because that's not what it is. Most dark side users have been broken down and twisted by even worse characters into following them. In most cases, it takes years of pain and suffering to be fully corrupted. It takes direct brainwashing to turn someone quickly. The very few who seemingly turned to the dark side completely by their own choice were just inherently drawn to the worst aspects of a person's nature

Many jedi have their own flaws and struggles. Quite a few lose their way and need time to rediscover themselves and who they are as jedi, but many of them never fall to the dark side because the dark side is more severe than having negative traits

The light side represents who a person is when they are at peace with themselves. It's who they are when they accept their vices as part of them, and then refuse to let those same vices dominate them. Keeping your worst traits under control is not a form of repression

The dark side is the full rejection of all of your positive traits. It's embracing your vices to the point that compassion and kindness no longer exist. It's expressing every negative emotion without thought or restraint

Light represents freedom. You're free to decide for yourself what kind of person you want to be. You're free to choose your way forward. You're free to change and grow as you please

Darkness is the one that represents being trapped. It's the side that chains you to your hatred and refuses to let go. It's what blinds you to the goodness in the world and lose sight of everything you hoped to be

That's why there's no such thing as positive corruption in Star Wars

yes there's a lot of things to criticize about Star Wars but one thing i will always love it for is being so unabashedly tragic

i'm sure it's been said before, but one of the main things i think powers the SW fandom (fics in particular) is the (in)evitability of it all

time travel fix-its are one of the most popular sub-categories of fics that i've seen (for the prequels at least) but i see it much more rarely in other fandoms. i know each fandom has their own niches that they dig into but star wars fic writers took one look at this decades long story of people who were doomed from the start and said 'not in my house bitch'

and i'm never tired of it, because there's so many places where just one different action could have changed the story entirely, but didn't

was it over the moment Palpatine succeeded in feeding Anakin's fears and his distrust toward the Jedi? the moment the Sith gained control of the senate? what about when the war started, when the Jedi were made generals of men designed to be their executioners? what about when Dooku left the order? when Qui-Gon Jinn died, leaving barely-knighted Obi Wan Kenobi to raise a child he had no idea how to care for? when the Jedi massacred the Mandalorians at Galidraan, leaving Jango Fett primed (hah) for revenge? when Palpatine, and thus the Sith, first gained influence? when the Jedi were tied to the Republic, all the way back at the Ruusan Reformation?

there are so many little moments that turn into this huge web of cause and effect when you take a step back. and in canon, these characters are dooming themselves while we watch, but what reason do they have to do anything different? they don't know they're in a tragedy - its dramatic irony at its goddamn finest

but there's this thing about decisions: for it to be a choice, there has to be another option. and our heroes make their mistakes because that's what they do, while we aren't privy to that other option, leaving that little what-if. it's a favorite human pastime, to think about what might have been.

we start at episode 4, though, fourty or so years after what you could arguably call the start, and find ourselves watching the dominoes fall in place throughout 1, 2, and 3.

and we can hate the choices, hate the tragedy, hate what happened to our beloved characters, but we knew. we had the luxury of knowing.

it's a love story, it's political intrique, it's sci-fi at its finest, and they were dead from the start.

reading about hayden's understanding of anakin's psychology in revenge of the sith is so illuminating. his fall is not about his moral convictions or about loyalty to a mentor. he's selfishly looking for ways to increase his own power to resist change, without regard for any ethical boundaries, he simply doesn't care about that. he's apolitical, amoral; it's all about what he wants.

anakin just doesn't love obi-wan and the jedi more than he loves being important and having control over the world around him. he doesn't love freedom or justice more than he loves license to do and have whatever he wants. it's really what makes him so dangerous, such a malleable weapon to be wielded. he doesn't have ethical boundaries or convictions to keep him steady.

lacking firm definition of what is good and what is evil allows anakin to redefine those terms to suit his needs. it's what allows him to kill innocents and still not think of himself as evil. it's what allows him to tell obi-wan that the jedi are evil, despite it being an obvious self-delusion. he's lost because his moral compass doesn't point north, but spins freely to face whatever he wants.

Sometimes I think about the Ghost post-rebels and its just so painful imagining it empty except for Hera and baby Jacen. Also chopper. But.

The memories are etched into the metal itself, the crew and the ship are intertwined, one and the same. But now its empty and quiet and hollow. The absence of everyone is so strong they feel like ghosts even though Sabine and Zeb are alive and well and still visit. I bet the memories and emotions are so strongly embedded that Jacen can sense them.

I bet anyone Force-sensitive who walks onto that ship can just feel how loved and lived in it was.

If the Ghost outlives Hera and Jacen and anyone else who might inherit it. If it sits abandoned for a hundred years on some wild peaceful planet. Any Jedi who found it would still feel the memories and know.

A ship is an entity all its own, its an amalgamation of the people who live on it and that goes for starships, sailing ships, any ship that people live on. Remember when the razorcrest got blown up in the Mandalorian? My heart fucking stopped. If the Ghost ever got blown up? Unspeakable grief. Its not just the ship that's gone, its not even just a home. Its part of your soul.

If you live on a ship you trade a little piece of your soul for a little piece of the ships' (that's how you get addicted to the sea or the stars)

Both within the Rebellion and the New Republic, Hera Syndulla is all about protocol, about order and regulations, because she knows that while it might feel slow and painstaking, that’s how things get done. Remember how she told off Kanan for just being a little bit snarky in one such meeting? She is one brilliant pilot, but she’s no loose canon, she respects the system—which is why her losing her cool with the council for implying Ezra might be dead speaks VOLUMES. That’s her son. That’s her son just as much as Jacen is. And she may not have the Force, but she’d know if he were dead.

i think the reason Commander Cody’s character is often undersold is because his story isn’t ever told in any one story. his screentime in tcw is low, but meaningful, his appearances in comics are incredible, but overlooked, he isn’t touched on much in RotS, but his personality is still super obvious there, and he’s only in one episode of Bad Batch, but he quite literally changed the entire course of the season with his short amount of time. all of it is rich and shows how much he cares about the people around him and that’s what makes him such a great character. he doesn’t need hours of time to make a difference in the other characters around him, he does that naturally no matter what

From the ROTS comic alone it’s clear Cody stands before the Council 20 times a day before lunch

I dunno if anyone is reading the World Between Worlds sequence like I am, but as someone with PTSD its giving me so many feelings about the process of ‘recovering’ from war trauma.

How Anakin has being watching over her and seeing her become stagnant and sick and emotionless and pushing people who care away. Pushing away her identity and responsibility to train the future because of this weight on her. She’s just going through the motions of being a Jedi.

And as soon as he has an opportunity he intercepts her. He knows how she’s been doing. But she sees him and immediately starts deflecting and putting on a mask. Reverting back to a teen and giving a cocky little comment about successfully hitting him. And he’s like oh you’re so powerful and put together? Let’s shake it up then.

And then she’s right where she’s always been, but now it’s literal. Trapped in time in the war. Years and years have passed but she’s still that little girl. No matter what she does she can’t move past this point. She’s never been able to leave. She sees the wounded and dead clones like she always sees them, and she feels so much guilt.

But Spirit Anakin isn’t there to feed into that. He’s here to get her to wake up. So he teases her. Ahsoka gets angry. HOW can he be so callous? How can he not care? Doesn’t he realize this terrible thing happened? And Anakin basically responds with brutal honesty. What the fuck is me being serious going to change? It wont take away the mistakes. But they were mistakes. You didn’t cause harm deliberately.

But Ahsoka isn’t getting it. She’s so tired. She asks him, what if I don’t want to fight my guilt anymore? And he’s honest again. Then you’ll be dead. Fight it or die by it.

And then they’re on Mandalore. And Anakin tries again to get her to see she’s more than this terrible thing that happened. But she’s still stuck and not ready to listen. She turns the blame on him. And Anakin is like oh this is what it’s about? You want to give up because of me? You say you’re like this because of me? Fight what you think I am then. Why don’t you just let Vader kill you then. Fight or die.

And as Vader beats at her it finally clicks. She won’t let Vader win. She won’t let the terrible thing win. She wants to live! There’s still a spark of fight left in her.

And Anakin can finally let her go because he knows she’ll be alright.

I do have a question for Dave now. Is Anakin the father…?

“The Father was a powerful Force wielder who resided in the realm of Mortis. His children, the Daughter and the Son, represented the light side and the dark side of the Force, respectively. Balance was maintained between them by the Father until his failing health compelled him to search for a successor.”

He is watching the events of the galaxy unfold from the world between worlds and intervening when he feels he should, as he did with Ahsoka here. That counts as keeping the balance, which is his fate as the chosen one.

But what caught my attention here was how he showed complete control of both light and darkness. The way he effortlessly switches back and forth between Vader and Anakin to make his point to Ahsoka and guide her??

He is also unapologetic about his darkness now. In fact he turns into Vader in front of Ahsoka the second he realizes that’s Ahsoka’s fear (oh so that’s the problem?). But he also makes it a point to tell her Vader isn’t all that he is, and that he is good too. Anakin has acknowledged he is both light and darkness, and accepted that being both is okay.

Obviously while the Mortis arc made darkness and light physical in the form of the gods in order to make the story easier to comprehend, here and in most of the Star Wars shows they are just energy. So him being “the father” would be less literal and more about the concept of what the father was (the chosen one).

Anyway. I need to think more on this before saying further. But I am super excited about this.

#JUST ABSOLUTELY LOST MY MIND ABOUT THIS #NOT ONLY DID WE GET HAYDEN!ANAKIN #BUT THE FLICKERING BETWEEN ANAKIN AND VADER #BECAUSE AHSOKA IS THE ONE HAUNTED BY HIM AND THIS IS HER VISION #SHE CAN FORGET FOR A LITTLE WHILE #SHE CAN CHASE AFTER HIM AS SHE REMEMBERS HIM FROM THE CLONE WARS #BUT VADER'S SPECTRE STILL HANGS OVER HER #SHE COULDN'T GET THROUGH THIS VISION WITHOUT CONFRONTING HIM #BECAUSE VADER IS WHAT TRULY HAUNTS HER #THIS IS WHAT AHSOKA IS TRULY AFRAID OF #THAT SHE LOVED HER MASTER AND HE BECAME THIS #THAT ALL THE GOOD IN ANAKIN STILL BECAME THIS #IT'S SO IMPORTANT THAT IT'S NOT JUST VADER #BUT THAT IT FLICKERS BACK AND FORTH #BECAUSE HE IS BOTH TO HER IN THIS MOMENT #THE LAST TIME SHE SAW HIM THAT WE KNOW OF THIS IS WHO HE WAS #HER MEMORIES OF HIM AS SHE KNEW HIM CLASHING WITH HER KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT HE BECAME #ALL WRAPPED UP IN THE TERRIFYING HAUNTING FLICKERING BETWEEN BOTH #BECAUSE ANAKIN SKYWALKER IS DARTH VADER #AND THAT'S FUCKING TERRIFYING