Just Art And Things I Love

starvedforpizza replied on this post of mine:

To say that the Force wanted the Jedi to be wiped out (ie, that a genocide of an entire people and their culture was a good and necessary thing), you also have to be saying that Star Wars decided the way to show this plot element was through baby murder.  That to show that this was a justified choice was to show it through innocent children being slaughtered. That’s an underlying point of my original post (where I personally cannot separate Anakin from the multiple baby murderings, so I have a difficult time being on his side in anything), that you cannot separate out the genocide of the Jedi from the baby murder.  They are the same thing, so if one says the genocide was necessary, you’re saying the deaths of those babies were necessary, and that this is the message Star Wars was trying to tell us, this is how Star Wars chose to show it.  Not by just killing adults, but specifically through showing the babies were stabbed to death, too. And I just cannot buy that that’s the way Star Wars would show us that kind of message.  I cannot buy that Star Wars would tell us, “Well, sometimes genocide is necessary.”  I cannot buy that Star Wars would tell us, “Those babies being murdered was necessary to show to understand that this was the path to good.” Further, it’s also that Anakin is wrong about what he does, by narrative intention.  George Lucas says about Anakin:      “Anakin wants to be a Jedi, but he cannot let go of the people he loves in order to move forward in his life. The Jedi believe that you don’t hold on to things, that you let things pass through you, and if you can control your greed, you can resolve the conflict not only in yourself but in the world around you, because you accept the natural course of things. Anakin’s inability to follow this basic guideline is at the core of his turn to the dark side.” –George Lucas, sci-fi magazine      “It’s fear of losing somebody he loves, which is the flipside of greed.  Greed, in terms of the Emperor, it’s the greed for power, absolute power, over everything.  With Anakin, really it’s the power to save the one he loves, but it’s basically going against the fates and what is natural. “ –George Lucas, Revenge of the Sith commentary Anakin is going against the fates and what is natural in ROTS, what we see in ROTS is not the natural path meant for the galaxy.  His fall is due to his inability to accept basic Jedi guidelines, it was Anakin turning away from the fundamental truths of life at every turn, not because this is what the Force wanted. George Lucas has been very, very clear about the core issue of Anakin’s fall and his actions, and that it’s going against the course of life itself.  So, no, the Force push Anakin to destroy both the Jedi and the Sith, because the point is that Anakin was supposed to let go, that’s the theme of Star Wars, Lucas has said that many times. But he didn’t and it led to baby murder, because that’s against what fate is in Star Wars.

I’d argue that the Force’s “will” is also… much more abstract than what that reply was suggesting. The Force isn’t like God - it’s not a fully sentient being with complete agency and purpose. It’s, as Obi-Wan explains in ANH, an energy field made of every living thing (past, present, and future), and it influences and can be influenced. It’s a web that the Jedi and Sith can tug on voluntarily while everybody else influences it passively. So in that sense, I personally don’t see Anakin getting visions as the Force necessarily ‘wanting’ him to get those like a person wants things to happen. There is an element of sentience to the Force but I feel like it’s much more that Anakin is tied to specific people and places in that web - so when something past, present or future tug those strings, it tugs at Anakin too. It’s just something that’s going to happen because of how the Force works (and in a few cases like with the visions of Padmé’s death, it can be argued that it’s probably Palpatine that’s directly doing the tugging anyway).

What the Force has in the way of sentience seems to be directed much more towards overall currents. It’s like a river that ‘wants’ to flow one way because it’s natural. The way I see it, what the Force can unequivocally be said to ‘want’ is indeed balance, that is to say peace (not something achieved through baby murder). For example, only the Force practitioners opposed to the Dark Side get to live forever, get to form healthy and natural bonds with kyber crystals, get to tap into the full potential of their relationship with the Force… The Force helps the surviving Jedi much more directly than it helps the Empire track them down (see Rebels: the contraption used to keep Luminara’s essence and lure the Jedi in is clearly very unnatural, whereas the Lothal Wolves helping the Rebels is framed as this incredible symbiotic relationship. Ezra can also access the World Between Worlds on his own, but Sidious had to use him to try and get to it.) 

The Force isn’t outright talking to the Jedi and helping them like a God would, but they naturally have a deeper and more meaningful connection with it than the Sith do. That seems to be the Force’s ‘will’ - a strong current that pushes towards a balanced outcome (again, not achieved by baby murder), with the very specific things being more of the interconnected tugging and pulling all living beings exert on each other?

The more direct agents of the Force - the Father, Daughter, Son, Priestesses, Loth Wolves and the Bendu - are always embodiments of very specific aspects of the Force, and they very significantly do not have the same will or go about things the same way, like they would if the Force was one conscious Being. However, those agents all want balance (with the exception of the Son, because the Dark Side is inherently anti-balance in that it never stops trying to overtake everything), and those agents still overwhelmingly side with the Jedi over the Sith. 

So yeah. That the Force wanted Anakin to see his mom but arrive too late to save her? Not buying it. That the Force wanted Anakin to freak out over Padmé? Not buying it. That the Force ‘wants’ balance? Yes, but not through baby murder. Cause that’s the Dark Side. And the Dark Side isn’t balance. 

//Me, chiming I’m at 11:30 pm after my shift/

I often think of it a bit like this. The Force sort of has this… end goal. Like it was said, peace and balance. The Force - however much it is capable of feeling - wants that. And like it was said, yes others influence it and it influenced others. It’s a very push and pull. That being said, I sort of feel like it has that end goal in mind and it knows it will get there. The Force had very little concept of time - and why should it? It is energy, it is past, present, future, wrapped all in one at the same moment. It is literally everything. The End goal was always balance and peace. How it got there and how long it took? That was up to the free will of the people.

The Force seems to have given certain people the tools to achieve balance more than others (force sensitives, Jedi, etc.) and these people have this ability to access and connect with it more than others. The thing is, the Force isn’t taking anyone over. It’s not whispering in their ear telling them to specifically do atrocities. It has not (I don’t even think it really can) interfered with the free will of the people. So the people have a choice. Abuse it, like the Sith, which IS NOT what the Force particularly wants. Do nothing, like some. Or do good and help others with their abilities, like the Jedi. To help try and bring the Force balance (which the Force rewards those people, with ability, enlightenment, bonds and even force ghost-ness).

The point is; the end goal was always balance and peace. HOW balance and peace was achieved and HOW LONG it took, was always entirely up to the people (aka Anakin).

Stories of Jedi and Sith - “What a Jedi Makes" | by Michael Kogge HELL YEAH WE ARE HERE FOR STANNING THE JEDI TEMPLE GUARDS BEING AWESOME “IT WAS RUMORED IN AGES PAST A MERE THREE HAD TURNED BACK AND ARMY OF THREE THOUSAND” WE STAND THE JEDI TEMPLE GUARDS IN THIS HOUSE

One paragragh from early in The Fallen Star that made me laugh. It’s by Regald Coll, a former crèche master, and is about as spoiler-free as a quote can get. Basically, if you know the premise of the High Republic, it’s fine.

“Well, he still thought nothing was more exhausting than teaching younglings. The Nihil were bad, sure, but try managing a roomful of toddlers who’ve missed their nap and just figured out they can basically do magic. It was not a task for the weak.” 

This is a good post about how little actual story the clones got, how that affects the way they weren’t shown in the spotlight, but it’s also a bigger thing with the narrative of Star Wars and you can see it with the droid characters, too.  The narrative doesn’t see either clones or droids as slaves in any real weighted way, and thus the characters within the narrative cannot treat the clones as slaves because the narrative itself doesn’t see them that way. The story doesn’t look at Luke Skywalker owning droids and see a slave owner, so the characters within the story can’t look at Luke Skywalker and see a slave owner.  The story doesn’t see the clones as slaves, so the characters within the story can’t act as if the clones are slaves (unless they’re doing so in bad faith). And that’s so deeply frustrating because we, the audience, can look at a really fucked up situation and see what’s so clear to us, but the narrative doesn’t.  And trying to have a discussion about it, without establishing clear Watsonian vs Doylist understandings of the story (and which discussion we’re trying to have at all, if we’re discussing the narrative from within the story or if we’re discussing the flaws of the writing from imperfect real people writing the story) will just circle around and around again. As @smhalltheurlsaretaken​ lays out, the narrative portrays the Jedi as being the friends of the clones, that’s the relationship they had according to the in-universe world. And pointing out how fucked up the writing is on a Doylist level, doesn’t change that the Jedi couldn’t really act any other way, because the story would not see it that way.

I absolutely agree with all of this, this especially:

>> most of what we know to be very, very wrong with the Clones’ situation is barely acknowledged by the creative team, to the point we can pretty much assume they just don’t care beyond what’s convenient for a plotline. I mean, beside a few select characters Filoni is particularly fond of, the majority of the Clones are narrative props: they’re here to be killed off to heighten the tension, to be comic relief, or to highlight a particular trait of the Jedi they’re serving under - and of course, they’re here to execute Order 66.

and it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently, too.

I feel like there are a couple of things going on.  One is just that the writers/creators didn’t really seem to emotionally get/care about all the unfortunate implications of this whole clone situation.  No one seems to have really stepped back and looked at things like how the clones were raised, whether they had any actual choice, how or even if the clones might want to grieve, what the emotional challenges of officers ordering their own brothers to their deaths might be, etc.  (A particular pet peeve: There seems to be bits and pieces of acknowledging the existential horror of your brothers all suddenly becoming brainwashed, but significantly less of the corollary that that ought to make every free clone utterly desperate to free every brother they can get their hands on as fast as they possibly can.)

But I think the other big issue is just that TCW is nominally a children’s show, but it’s also about a war.  And since it’s about a war, there need to be deaths to show that it’s actually serious.  But since it’s a kid’s show it can’t be too tragic.  But hey, you have a bunch of mostly nameless, faceless, fully-armored beings (who also happen to look quite a bit like stormtroopers), and you can show them dying right and left without turning every episode into a tragedy.  

(The way the clones weren’t really treated as individuals in AotC, and only barely in RotS, probably didn’t help either.)

And as soon as someone is no longer a kid, you start getting some cognitive dissonance.  If each clones is a unique person with a name and friends and feelings, isn’t it a problem that they’re dying right and left?  Shouldn’t someone mourn them?  If the Jedi think clones are valuable, and the Jedi are willing to pause a critically important mission to give a Jedi a funeral, if they really believe what they say they do, shouldn’t they at least mention all the clones that died?

But if the show ever acknowledges that the clones’ deaths are tragic, the tragedy would be utterly overwhelming, so it really can’t.  There are a handful of times when a named clone dies (Hardcase, Hevy, Jesse, Echo temporarily, Fives, etc.), and while those moments are sad, they don’t linger.  Which, I guess, is kind of an inevitable effect of being part of a TV series, too.  Any grief doesn’t linger episode to episode (or at least past a single arc).  And that goes for clones’ grief for their brothers just as much as the Jedi’s.  

Rex and Cody do have their brief moment of reminiscing in S7 (”Sometimes in war it’s hard to be the one that survives.”), but how many times beyond that does anyone, clone or Jedi, bring up anyone’s death from a previous episode?  (Which is actually a legitimate question of mine rather than rhetorical: I’ve been bouncing around between episodes, and still have some I haven’t gotten around to watching yet.)

So yes, I very much feel that this isn’t a failure of the Jedi - they’re clearly written to show that care for the clones more than anyone else - but rather a failure (or at least a drawback) in how the entire show is designed.  There is so much tragedy - and so many extremely unfortunate implications - but it’s more a case of viewers going deeper into the show and all the logical implications thereof than the writers seem to have ever expected them to.

People’ll be like: “Plo Koon is the best dad, I wish all Jedi were like him” or “Kit Fisto is everything the Jedi should have been” or “Shaak Ti is the best mom” etc. etc. and follow it up with how much they hate the Council.

Like, buddy, buddy, honey, dude. Has it occurred to you… That you might actually *like* the Council? 

Jokes on them; they’re all on the Jedi Council.

And they’re generally known to be friends.

Not only is despising the Jedi and everything they stand for a pretty dumb take, but it’s also like boring as hell… like they have this cosmic connection with the fabric that binds the universe together and they use it move things without touching them, swing around their pretty colorful swords, low-key read people’s minds and make friends do you not see the potential?!?!

A dorm system sounds interesting. But how exactly would that be set up? Man I just had the general idea of this but this concept does have so much more to explore.

Although I have done plenty of college, I’ve never actually lived in a dorm system, but, if I had l to guess, it would mostly be padawans who grew up together. Those who were raised in the same or adjacent clans. It may be some of their friends getting together to stay in a dorm or maybe even a literal system in place by the Jedi. Since they are so big, I find it hard to imagine that they wouldn’t have people organizing living spaces like that.

The Jedi Temple is huge so it wouldn’t be all that surprising for there to be a level or wing for padawan dorms/places either. Like little apartments that a couple of kids could share, obviously with some supervision over several rooms (cause even though jedi are mature and great, they are still kids and teenagers) and probably some more communal areas. They probably have a cafeteria or something. Possibly a laundry room. The dorm/apartments probably wouldn’t be super large, mostly because the jedi generally live rather humbly and don’t have as much interest in that sort of thing.

@mothnem actually pointed out that there could be an age thing too. Where younger padawans could live in dorms and when they get older, could move in with their masters. I find this also a fairly plausible and interesting idea, as it would be a good transition. From creche living, to less populated dorm/small group living, to master and padawan roommates and then eventually when they become a knight, their own living space.

I figure that most padawan roommates would probably be around the same age, give or take a few years but I suppose it wouldn’t be out of the question for older and younger padawans to be roommates possibly. I just thought since most initiates become padawans around the same time, they would probably be more likely to bunk together in dorms/quarters/apartments.

“the jedi kicked out ahsoka for no reason” bro she was literally framed for a terrorist attack against the republic on temple grounds

And then she went on the run with a known separatist agent when she herself claimed "running means you're guilty" two episodes earlier

And like it wasn't even that they declared her guilty, they separated her from the Order so that a legal trial could take place, by the judicial authorities. And clearly once she was declared innocent, their arms were open and welcoming.

Rewatching the Wrong Jedi arc is very painful and I don't do it often, but what I do sometimes is skip all the scenes that are from Ahsoka's pov and watch the other ones, and huh, OH BOY does she look guilty. And what's the alternative here? Sticking by her because 'she's one of them'? The real culprit is Barriss, who is also a young member of their Order who should have been above any suspicion.

The scene where the Council tells her she can come back is super awkward and it feels wrong and they look terrible, but it's because the arc is from Ahsoka's pov. We experienced her distress and her feelings of abandonment and betrayal, of course they feel like massive hypocrites. But watching it from their pov only? She couldn't have looked guiltier if she tried.

(And the 'I know my loved one is innocent and I will defend them NO MATTER THE EVIDENCE' attitude is literally what RotS frames as THE WORST POSSIBLE STANCE TO ADOPT, really.)

When people call the Jedi dogmatic for trying to restore balance to the Force and get rid of the Sith. Do they not realize that the Sith are literally like mass murdering, selfish assholes with kill counts well above the hundreds (and that's for someone relatively tame, like Ventress. Vader's like a billion times worse and so is Palpatine, Dooku, etc). How is it bad trying to get rid of them again? Saving millions, even billions of people, and not wanting the galaxy to be flung into mindless chaos and oppression is dogmatic? So stupid

The Jedi don't even actively try to hunt down the Sith, its more like... when the Sith show up and cause trouble, the Jedi step in and defend. In Star Wars, historically, it is usually Sith who kill Sith, because these dudes have chaotic murder as a philosophy.

The Jedi don't go out to proactively eradicate Sith, because Falling and becoming Sith is a choice. Sith choose to become evil. They choose to murder, just like Jedi choose and keep choosing to help others, to try to spread peace. They also choose to eradicate others' choice, and to prevent others from removing themselves from the Sith's control. Sith coerce (the clones), subvert and inculcate (Anakin, Ventress), or torture and twist (Maul).

Even after Sith start down the path of evil, murder, violence, and genocide, the Jedi still try to offer them choices when they track them down to confront them-- to turn back to the Light, or at least to stop being a Sith. Some people take that choice, including Quinlan Vos and Asajj Ventress-- but others refuse to turn back. Dooku, for example, duels with Yoda after Yoda tells his student that he can stop, that he can be forgiven, that he doesn't need to keep going down the Dark path. Dooku, however, refuses.

What's less dogmatic than free will and the reminder that you can always choose differently, and that someone will be willing to help and forgive you?

This is such a small moment, a fairly predictable moment within a story about a Jedi outpost on an Outer Rim world that gets attacked by a couple of Drengir, but I can’t stop thinking about it. “How could such darkness stay hidden among us?” “No matter how many times we slash them… these creatures still attack.  If we cannot reason with them, we cannot find peace… we need to protect the people, even if it means…” I can’t get past the parallels here, the whole thing about how the Jedi never sensed the Drengir on the planet while they were establishing their outpost, how they realize they can’t reason with the Drengir, so they cannot find peace with them, but that doesn’t mean they can just give up, they still need to protect the lives of the people who will die without them. And I’m finding the parallel of the Drengir versus the droid army fascinating, how neither of them could be reasoned with, throwing an enemy at the Jedi who cannot find peace, that it’s not within the nature of them, is something that’s difficult because the Jedi then have to face that constant stream of being unable to find their preferred outcome. That you can offer it time and again to them, you can try to talk to them, try to reason with them, even all the way to the end of the war, Mace Windu was trying to reason with the droids–

–trying to find peace with them, but that’s part of the whole plan of exhausting the Jedi–throwing an enemy at them that they can’t detect, an enemy they can’t negotiate with, an enemy that seems inexhaustible (as droids never get tired, as the Drengir just keep regenerating and fight by wearing the Jedi out first), until eventually they’re not immortal and will make a misstep. The High Republic has far more breathing room on its side, the time between Nihgil and Drengir attacks are months, rather than days.  They have time to rest and recover.  There are fewer Jedi dying en masse like the hundreds that died in a single day on Geonosis.  The Force is less clouded with darkness (which means the Jedi cannot see through it, they’re not designed to vibe with the dark).  There are more of them, they can send entire teams of Jedi to deal with a problem, instead of just one or two at a time. But the events of the High Republic do not come without context or the recognition of where this is all ultimately going.  When you put people’s lives on the line, the Jedi will always choose to fight, even when it’s often times a difficult choice, even when it goes against their values and their ideals, when sometimes it’s easy to fight a mindless monster that doesn’t want peace, it’s easy to fight a droid that’s using Twi’lek children as living shields, but as time goes on, the Jedi get tired, they’re still human, and the choices will get less clear cut, and the politics messier. Already the Nihil are often made up of people who have nowhere else to go to feed themselves, who turn to pillaging and plundering and murdering to give themselves a life, and the Drengir seem simpler in comparison, but when you’re fighting a war on multiple fronts, when one aspect is easy to take a stand against, but it comes attached to a more difficult problem and how much you get directly involved in something you’re not meant to just take over, like you just see where all of this is going and it’s nowhere good. The Jedi are deeply compassionate, from the High Republic to the prequels, they put others’ lives above themselves and even above their own ideals. And there’s just no easy answer out of this, that the High Republic is already much easier, but you can see how everything is going to get more and more tricky and the Jedi are going to be asked to perform more and more miracles, because that’s what the galaxy asks of them and there are lives on the line.

Imagine if the Jedi had outreach programmes for the general populace of Coruscant and the various other planets they had temples and bases on. 

Imagine a soup kitchen in the lowest levels of Coruscant; Obi-Wan takes Anakin when he’s barely begun his apprenticeship, showing him that somewhere in the galaxy the Jedi help people like his mother, like who he used to be. They feed the homeless and the poor who never have anything to eat and Anakin watches with wide eyes and a hint of anger.

Imagine the Jedi working with disadvantaged youngsters- of course not training them to be Jedi but helping them see the opportunities they have to make something of their life despite their backgrounds and helping them seize those opportunities. Master Yoda would often take the chance to teach, a cryptic message of hope or self-empowerment always on the tip of his tongue. They giggle at his speech patterns but in truth they often ponder his words at night on the streets or while their parents argue so loud their world might shatter.

Imagine Mace Windu helping kids and adults with anger learn how to let it go. He gets through to them in a way no one else does because soft words don’t always make things better but there’s nothing like cold, hard understanding. In truth though, he values the time he spends with the youngest kids, just watching them enjoy the chance to be children amidst their suffering.

Imagine a half-way house for the victims of abusive situations. Aayla pilots it with the help of Luminara, often joined by padawans from all masters. Quinlan Vos took an interest in helping it, mainly from behind the scenes in case women whose abusers were male found it intimidating being around another man.

Force knows if this sort of thing would actually happen in canon but in my headcanon it certainly does.

Just a little thought.

We aren’t shown a ton of what the jedi do outside of the war, considering most of the prequels occur in that time period. But honestly, the likelihood of the jedi doing something like this is very high. We are shown teams and jedi that go on senate sanctioned missions; the ones we see are generally negotiations but there is an enormous chance that the jedi had programs and volunteer work all over the galaxy.

The simple fact is; not all jedi were warriors or diplomats. Yes. Many of them are, but thinking that every single Jedi did the same kind of thing that Qui-Gon or Mace or Obi-Wan did is highly, highly unlikely. The matter is, it is very most likely that they have long term missions or even Jedi who help planets, live there and volunteer/are on this long time missions.

There are Temples everywhere. We often see the abandoned ones but it wouldn’t be surprising if there were jedi anywhere in the galaxy that don’t reside generally in the Coruscant main temple.

And for those who do reside in the Temple; there are probably plenty that can’t or don’t go on the usual type of missions. The disabled, unabled, injured (short or long term) the elderly and the retired. What do you think they do? Sure, I imagine they meditate a lot but most Jedi live and thrive from helping people. I do think it’s abundantly likely that these Jedi do volunteer at any number of charities, programs and foundations or even have their own that they run simply because Jedi help people. That is there whole thing.