my favorite star wars villian is the mudhorn

Fight fight fight fight! Except not now, it's actually nap time.

Art Fight attack on @mythosaursarecool! I love this mythosaur design you have no idea she's so cool hello???

Jedi Master Gu Yuan, artist and archiver of the Jedi Archive Series.

Details and Alt outfit under cut!

i’m not talking about the love. i’m talking about leaving the Order because of that love.

you’re giving up your entire community, culture, family, and beliefs because you found one thing that you want more than all of it? That’s attachment. That’s selfishness. holding one thing above all else.

the problem with Anakin wasn’t his love for Padmé. it’s the fact that he held her above all other things. he was willing to give up everything in order to save her. he was willing to destroy the only structured community he had ever been a part of in order to keep her alive.

and she still died.

had Anakin loved Padmé in a normal way, had he been able to incorporate his love for her with his life as a Jedi, had he been able to love her and also love and protect the people of the Galaxy, things might have turned out very differently.

Anakin was right when he said that in the Jedi Code, “love is encouraged,” but the way he interpreted that love is what was wrong.

Jedi don’t love one thing over everything else. that is not their way. they love unconditionally and equally. it may not be the same kind of love for each thing, but none of that love is more or less than any other.

The Jedi taught emotional control, not repression.

The Jedi took kids with parental consent, they did not kidnap them.

The Jedi did not hold people against their will, they could leave the Order at any time.

whats more strange: two sets of ears or the daimyo of tattooine out in the desert with an icecream truck

It doesn't matter if the Jedi made mistakes or were flawed. It truly truly doesn't, it's SO beyond the point of this narrative it's not even funny.

The POINT of the death of the Jedi is that you can do everything right and still lose. And even more so, you can be the most moral, compassionate, selfless person in the galaxy and it won't matter if everyone around you has decided to be selfless and greedy.

The point of the death of the Jedi is that they seem like this group that should be nearly impossible to take down, they're full of powerful people who can do powerful things, they've got laser swords and magic powers and can jump really far and run really fast, and they use all of this to do nothing but HELP PEOPLE all the time, and in the end they all die because no one around them wanted to do the same. Fascism is a group effort, it's not the work of one dude or even two. Yes, Palpatine comes in and abuses the system to do bad things, but his entire plan relies on THOUSANDS of people choosing to do bad things with him. Anakin, yes, but also the corporate alliance and Dooku and Jango and Grievous and Maul and the Geonosians and the Kaminoans and Tarkin and so so so many Senators (enough that a Delegation of 2000 feels like their efforts are likely a shot in the dark). The Jedi are doing EVERYTHING RIGHT, they're heroes who give their lives to save others, but they're surrounded by people who wouldn't do the same, and that's what kills them.

THAT'S the point. The Jedi being flawed completely bypasses that point entirely. Focusing on "mistakes" the Jedi might have made, or flaws they might have, means that you're now completely ignoring the entire message about how fighting BACK against fascism and evil is ALSO a group effort. The Jedi cannot do it alone, and if enough people are not standing up to darkness with them, IT IS GUARANTEED TO WIN. Even the most powerful, most selfless people in the world can't stand up against a galaxy full of people prepared to submit to their own fears.

Posts like "these are the Jedi failed movies" truly just make me shake my head. They're actually the "fascism wears a smile until it strikes you down and then it's too late" movies. They're the "the senate became corrupt and clapped in the face of genocide" movies. They're the "make people scared enough of war until they accept authoritarianism" movies. They're the "fear and possessiveness will tear you up on the inside" movies. The Jedi were the heroes of lore, people loved and looked up to them, looked to them for safety, and then too much got put on their shoulders on purpose by Palpatine, and also by a senate that didn't want to act (not you Padme and Bail and Mon, you're perfect). They were drafted and used and scapegoated, which is, you know, a tenet of the vast majority of authoritarian governments (Hitler and Stalin, for instance, might be on different ends of the political spectrum, but they sure both did scapegoat specific groups and commit mass murder, just differently).

When some people say "these movies are about the fall of the Jedi" what they mean is "the Jedi failed" but that's not what "the fall of the Jedi means." It means they were wiped the fuck OUT. Like, Jesus, in Rogue One Tarkin is talking about burning out the final MEMORY of the Jedi by blowing up the holy city in Jedha. Palpatine had to get rid of the Jedi because to get rid of the Jedi was to get rid of the final people standing in his way after he had already worn them out. His intention was not only to kill them, but to alter the galaxy's entire perception of them. To rip away hope. People are always looking for the Jedi to be Bad or nitpick their mistakes (because while other people are allowed to make mistakes, the Jedi never are). Palpatine made himself look like a benevolent grandpa who would keep everyone safe. And that, more than anything, is what gave him SO much power. He stole the narrative.

It's just like. Of course WE know what was going to happen! We know from watching the OT that the PT can only end in tragedy. But the characters don't know that! They don't have all the info! That's how a tragic story structure works. We see it coming and they can't.

*idea gets more complicated*

*idea gets more complicated*

*idea gets more complicated*

*idea gets more complicated*

"Although Yoda clearly identifies fear, anger, and aggression as the dark side of the Force, and warns Luke not to use the strength that flows from them, as they will rule him and he will forever have to bear the consequences of what he has done under their sway, many fans and critics have distorted these teachings. The dark side is often asserted to be a malevolent metaphysical force or principle of wickedness that operates through fear, anger, and aggression. In the Expanded Universe novel Heir to the Empire, Timothy Zahn even altered Yoda’s teachings, writing, “Fear and anger, Yoda had often warned [Luke], were the slaves of the dark side.” In the 2000s, Matthew Stover spoke out against what he identified as the “dark-side-is-the-devil” perspective in the Expanded Universe, attempting to steer the narrative back toward Lucas’ canon. However, a few years later, in James Luceno’s The Unifying Force, Luke declared, “Anger by itself is not of the dark side,” and nevertheless insisted on fighting to “eradicate” the dark side, calling it “Evil” itself. Moreover, video games such as Knights of the Old Republic II portrayed drawing strength from the dark side as calling upon a mystical entity for magical powers through anger and aggression.

What Yoda teaches in the original trilogy is that evil behavior is the result of falling under the sway of, and being carried by one's own dark side - fear, anger, aggression, hate. In the prequel trilogy, he explains, all is rooted in fear. "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering" means, there's always fear behind anger, there's always anger behind hate, and these are adding up to suffering.

The arising of these negative states starts with the profound fear that you’ll be harmed in some way, that you won’t get what you want or that you’ll lose what you want to hold on to, and that you’ll be in pain as a result. Fear is closely related to attachment: the more attached we are to someone or something, the more we fear not having it or being separated from it. Fear is a predecessor to anger and hate – fear of loss, of not getting what you want, of pain etc. When fear arises, anger and hatred quick to follow. Anger acts as a strategy to protect ourselves and what we consider ours. This is the egoistic perspective that sees the “I” as the center of everything and “others” as sources of pleasure or pain that either keeps the “I” happy, thus must be attained by possession, or makes the “I” miserable, and thus must be pushed away and destroyed. This attitude eventually hardens into hostility and hatred.

In the original trilogy, Yoda tells Luke that the Jedi Knight feels the Force – the energy that flows through one and make one a living being with mental and emotional processes, rather than inert matter - running through him, and his strength flows from it. However, there is a dark side to this energy: fear, anger and aggression. They arise very quickly during a fight and they offer an easy, quick access to strength, but if you give in to them and let them carry you, there is no turning back, they consume you. This is what happened with Darth Vader - this is what makes him "twisted and evil." To discern these sources of strength from safe ones, "to know the good side from the bad," as Luke put it, one must enter into a peaceful, calm, passive state of mind.

The lesson is not that anger is "wrong" and "evil" and "bad" so it must never arise. The lesson is that whenever anger arises, a Jedi Knight should do as Yoda did in Clone Wars, when he tells the projections of his dark side: "Part of me you are, yes. But power over me you have not. Through patience and training, it is I who control you. Control over me you have not. My dark side you are. Reject you I do."

The reason why I struggle to complete the larger essay is that there are just so many things to unpack about the historical, cultural and social context in which these assumptions about the Jedi in Lucas' Star Wars were made.

For example, the romantic/sexual relationship thing - aside from the obvious attachment-based love concepts prevalent in American culture, one could argue that declaring Legends' Luke Skywalker as this great reformer of the old Jedi Order is an attempt to make the Jedi Order conform the American Anglo-Protestant ideal - this Luke is supposedly abolished celibacy, introduced a highly individualistic culture where each Knight can interpret the will of the Force etc. One Legends writer outright asserted that the Jedi Council is the Vatican.

Historically? We can point at the Second Gulf War, but also like the Catholic Church/Vatican scandals changed how an American audience viewed the Jedi. By the time Episode 2 is coming out, they're not just monks anymore, they're an "institution", which George never intended for them to be seen as.

Culturally? Well, we're fresh out of the 90s, the antihero archetype was trending, yellow-spandex comic superheroes were now clad in black leather, etc. More details in this pic.

So a morally-right ensemble of characters who isn't written likeably by a Film Director who doesn't like writing in the first place?

An early 2000s grown-up audience will INSTINCTIVELY dislike them.

So any nuance in the Jedi's teachings or any nuance in a Jedi character is now interpreted in the most extreme sense, and is now a "reflection of the Jedi's hypocrisy."

"Yoda says that you're not allowed to be afraid EVER."

If you watch the first movie, Obi-Wan explains, “The Force is what gives the Jedi his power. An energy field, created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.” In truth, what he says is that living beings themselves are, in essence, an energy, and together, they all add up to a field of energy, the Force. As Lucas himself put it, the Force is “made up of all living beings” and “the Force is life.” Lucas actually believes, "one might think of life as a large organism, and we are but a small symbiotic part of it," and that life itself is unknowable and beyond words and thought, but we try to make sense of through personifying it and calling it God etc.

In Lucas' story, the "will of the Force" actually refers to the processes of the organism of life. Just like your cells are being governed by the larger structure they add up to, the way how reality happens - Anakin is born, he meets with Qui-Gon etc. - are the processes of the field of life, which is a complex, self-regulating system. Nothing is predetermined, because predetermination would imply that there is somebody external to the system who has decided what’s going to happen. However, there is no total free will here, because whatever happens arises from a complex web of causes and conditions. So, there are choices that will narrow down all to a specific outcome no matter what path you take (Anakin foresees that Padmé will die when she gives birth, Luke foresees that Han and Leia will be in pain in Cloud City) because the causes and conditions are already set for that future to arise. But the future is always shifting based on what path you choose (Anakin didn't foresee Obi-Wan being at Padmé's side until the idea that he might be able to learn to defeat death through the dark side started to take a root in his mind.)