ᘏᘏ thirsty bunn thursdays male reader x jo yuri (iz*one) ※ more of my works on fanprose. This piece is a nod to @octoberautumnbox.

If someone handed you a box  with everything you’ve ever lost,  what is the first thing you’d look for?

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Is Mace faltering in his judgement here for awhile and should have risen above his fears to take the high way (and possibly that this could have been Anakins role, to help him stand by the Jedi way) or is the contrast rather something like Anakins reaction to it and his personal gains and losses from following? Also thank you for all your amazing metas and Star Wars content. 2/2

I am really fucking tired of seeing Anakin Skywalker apologists blame Mace Windu, or otherwise imply that Mace Windu deserved his fate, just because he happened to rightfully believe that the man was not emotionally equipped to be a Jedi.

Here is an unpleasant truth for all of us: Mace Windu was right.

Anakin wasn’t equipped to be a Jedi.  He wasn’t equipped to live with Jedi restrictions the way the others were.  He wasn’t equipped to have to deal with political machinations or secret Sith scheming.  He wasn’t equipped to leave a loving mother.  He wasn’t equipped to balance Palpatine’s gaslighting with his Jedi trained perspective and self-awareness.

He wasn’t even equipped to leave the Jedi Order of his own free will and use his training and skills and connections to establish a life that suited him better.

Mace was right to be wary of Anakin.  Because Anakin did end up turning on the Order.  And Mace absolutely did not deserve what happened to him.

Mace Windu did not yank Anakin off of Tatooine while leaving his mother behind.

Mace Windu did not create the culture that raised Jedi from birth, without standard family attachments.  Mace was in fact as much a victim of that culture as Anakin or any other Jedi.

Mace Windu did not create the code or restrictions that forbid Anakin from marrying Padme.

Mace Windu was never cruel to Anakin.  He may have distrusted him or not been as warm as Anakin would have liked, but you know what?  He had no responsibility to do so.  He wasn’t Anakin’s master.  He’s certainly not a brother or father figure to him.  SO WHAT if he distrusted Anakin.  He’s allowed to have a fucking opinion.

Newsflash: in your life, you’re going to meet people who don’t trust you.  You’re going to meet people who dislike you.  You’re going to meet people who don’t know what to do with you.  And guess what?  You get the fuck over it.

There was no indication that Mace Windu was unfair to Anakin.  He opposed Anakin being a master.  Okay.  Anakin was twenty-three years old.  We have never seen a master that age.  Obi-Wan was still a Padawan at that age.  Anakin may have been a war hero, but that doesn’t mean that Mace can’t have legitimate misgivings about Anakin’s emotional readiness for the job.

There is no indication that Mace Windu mistreated Anakin.  If anything, he tried to protect him.  He knew Anakin and Palpatine were friends and he tried to spare Anakin from having to be part of the confrontation.

And when Mace says that he doesn’t trust Anakin, he’s specifically referring to Anakin’s assignment to spy on the Chancellor - and given Anakin’s track record of putting personal above duty, it’s entirely justified not to trust that he can handle being in that position. That’s why Mace says that Anakin will have earned his trust by reporting that the Chancellor was a Sith - because it would mean that Anakin was able to put his duty to the Jedi and the good of the Republic above his friendship with the Chancellor.

Also, Anakin had been actively betraying his vows to the Order for the past three years - not that the Jedi knew he was married, but it absolutely affected Anakin’s behavior. Would it be wrong to be distrustful of a spouse that’s been closed off and secretive because they’re cheating on you (whether you know they’re cheating or not)? Because that’s essentially what Anakin has been doing, since Jedi are effectively married to the Order itself.

Most of the discussions are the Jedi speaking amongst themselves, but it also includes some “debates” between Mace and the main villain of the comic, evil-money-grubbing-droid*. Many of these discussions also echo each other or other events in the comic in a way that is either intentional or someone accidentally striking gold.  *(The droids name is technically AD-W4, but honestly evil-money-grubbing-droid fits it way better. This thing makes General Grievous look like he has a healthy outlook on life.)

This is going to get long so buckle up (or blacklist the long post tag). 

The comic starts on a discussion between Ki-Adi Mundi and Mace about the war and the Jedi’s new role in it. This discussion is then (spiritually) continued between other Jedi characters. It follows through the entire comic. 

They continue to discuss how the Jedi strive to lead by example and Mace wonders if it would be easier to guide the Republic down the right path from the front of the battle lines. 

Mace later discusses his doubts with the ugliest Yoda ever painted. (It pains me to think that this is what Yodel/Yodito will look like in just a millennia.) 

Mace and Prosset Dibbs also discuss this very same thing, but here Prosset is the one who brings his doubts to Mace. 

(*Prosset speaks several times about sensing an unease in the force, which is interesting, considering how we know that the Clone Wars is a trap that has just sprung shut around the Jedi.)

Then we have my favourite moment:

A discussion about how they are peacekeepers is literally interupted by the war. We have the entirety of Clone Wars right here. The purpose of the Clone Wars even. This is an important conversation, but the Jedi do not have time for it. Because of the urgency of the war. It’s the worst and I love it.

There are also some good moments between Kit Fisto and Prosset but I’ve discussed those before, so I won’t be going into them as much here. To summarise, Prosset falls into despair over all the people who have died on this planet as a side-effect of the Separatist’s ruthless exploitation of the planets natural resources, and the failure of the Jedi to protect them. 

Prosset then accuses Mace and the Council of having turned their back on the orders teaching and advancing their own agenda (though he is unclear about what said agenda would be), that Mace is fighting this war for his own sake. He then goes even further and accuses the Council of tossing away the lives of this planets inhabitants as collateral, declaring that the true reason behind the mission is a power grab, that they too are aiming at explotating this planet, something we as readers know is false. They were sent there to figure out why the separatists are interested in this place. We have also seen Mace throughout the comic focus on protecting the civilians and trying to find a way to shut down the Separatist operation there, explicitly so that it won’t end up destroying the planet. 

But the confrontation between Prosset and Mace echoes an earlier confrontation between Mace and AD-W4.

This moment follows AD-W4 introducing his motivations* and Mace declaring that the Jedi fight for peace throughout the galaxy (”the greatest cause there is”). It also ties into AD-W4′s misunderstanding of who Mace is, what actually drives him, which eventually leads to his mission there failing. *(Evil-money-grubbing-droid openly states that he is only fighting for money, that he doesn’t care about who’s wrong or right in this conflict, only that the conflict continues so that his services are needed and he can make more money.)

This bit about a void is terribly interesting however, because Mace also speaks about being driven by the need to fill a void in this comic, but not in relation to himself, but to Prosset. 

“I have experienced first hand what insecurity does to men. How a mind warps with it’s obsessive quest to fill the void. With power. With wealth. With lust. With truth.”

Prosset denies it, but he has twisted, warped what is actually happening around him, into something that he can deal with. The Jedi Council have to be bad guys, there has to a conspiracy, because the truth that this is just out of their power and an uncountable amount of innocent people are going to die despite all of them trying their hardest is too much for him to handle.

Prosset also threw out a vague accusation that Mace is fighting this War for himself, something we see again in Mace’s final confrontation with AD-W4. During their fight the droid repeatedly taunts Mace:

“An excuse for your violence. You’re a hypocrite. Perhaps I am force-sensitive myself.”

It is certainly not a flattering picture of Mace Windu these two adversaries paint up. But this confrontation in turn ties into a mission from Mace’s youth which we are introduced to in flashbacks, where Padawan Mace Windu and Jedi Master Cyslin Myr has been sent to a planet suffering under a plague to investigate the disappearance of the Jedi in charge of an outreach temple there. The temple has been taking over be a “Master Drooz” a charlatan exploiting the suffering population, which has left young Mace outraged. 

*(Look at this, more Jedi philosophy. In this comic? What a surprise ^u^)

This moment is pretty clearly here to introduce us to Mace’s struggle with his anger, a characteristic both antagonists of this comic has honed in on. But this anger is connected to how deeply idealistic Mace is at heart, something they miss. As they confront the swindler, Drooz mocks them for what he sees as “squandering” a chance for profit and power whilst Mace’s answer underlines how those things grow pale in comparison to higher goals. 

This confrontation ends on a Palpatine parallel as subtle as a hammer blow to the head. 

This is the last part of the flashback, and it’s positioned right in the scene where Mace finally subdues Prosset, standing above him with his lightsaber pointing down. And then Mace knocks Prosset unconscious and says that he will be brought to the Jedi council. Master Myr’s lesson was heard. 

A fire burns in Mace, that is true. It is something Mace must struggle with and control. But he has learned to keep that fire tempered. He is no longer that hotheaded Padawan, but a disciplined Jedi Master.

The fight between Mace and AD-W4 ends in AD-W4′s defeat, but with evil-money-grubbing-droid gloating that his actual mission was still completed. 

Except AD-W4, like how the fake “Master Drooz” did not understand the Jedi and what drives them, does not understand Mace.

AD-W4 thinks he has Mace figured out, so he missed that Mace was really using himself as a distraction, whilst young Jedi Knight Rissa Mano rigged that ship to explode. As Mace tells AD-W4 during this fight: “Do not mock, nor underestimate, that which you do not understand.”

Mace actually believes in peace. Truly and deeply so. This belief, this want to do good and protect people, is what drives him forward. By believing that Mace was driven foremost by his anger AD-W4 misjudges his entire situation. 

“My righteousness is anything but self-motivated. There is definitive right and wrong. Good and evil.

Mace is going after AD-W4 not because he wants the fight and victory, “the power trip”, but because what evil-money-grubbing-droid is doing is wrong. The destruction he brings to this planet and it’s locals and his very indifference to it, is evil. 

This comic isn’t trying to pretend that Mace Windu is perfect. The very obvious Palpatine parallels reminds us of the moment in his future where Mace will not manage to temper his righteous fury. But this is not yet that point. 

Which brings us one final time back to Prosset. The crux of Prosset’s Fall lies in that this war is horrible and should not exist. The people of this planet should not be hurt and killed by it. 

But, as Mace points out here, it is not up to the Jedi to decide if there will be a war or not*. Peace is already lost. Not fighting will not protect these people.  *(The greatest irony of the Clone Wars is of course that it is an artificial conflict designed to benefit one person solely. There is someone who has decided that there should be a war and has moved everything into place for it. Palpatine could decide to end this any day, but the very core of his character declares that he never will.)

During Mace and Prosset’s fight Rissa is echoing the point Yoda made at the beginning of this comic. If the Jedi don’t keep moving, if they don’t fight, things will get even worse and more will die. 

The Jedi have to move forward and commit fully to their choice, because anything else will get people killed. It’s not about not doubting or questioning, but that sometimes you must move even when there is doubt.

2/2 I think we also need to keep in mind how.. Common victim blaming actually is. I do it and it’s been done to me. And (sorry for adding one more thing but I’ve got to get this off my chest) we can’t underestimate the fact that we tend to place the individual over the collective. 

That’s definitely a large part of it, I’ve said before on the subject:

It comes from a combination of the audience buying into Palpatine’s charismatic lies (he’s the one pushing the idea of the Jedi not trusting or appreciating Anakin, and manufacturing tension between them so that it becomes a reality, and the idea that the Jedi’s standard teachings of self-restraint are specifically targeting Anakin to hold him back somehow, that he deserves to get what he wants just because he’s powerful, etc - and some of the audience soaks that up just as Anakin does), and the natural tendency to be more concerned with the personal impact on the protagonist just due to the focus on their character. People want the protagonist to achieve their goals, we’re predisposed to favor their POV, and so when anything gets in the way of that, many find it unfair, especially since Anakin does as well.

I don’t know that it has anything to do with how big the films are, or if this is something that would apply to a small scale situation as well, though I do think that a lot of people don’t realize that the prequels (and the OT, but especially the prequels) are just big-budget weird indie films rather than the usual kind of movie we’re exposed to. So that could definitely factor into it, too.

Victim-blaming, definitely a lot of that - I think part of that is to do with us being used to seeing, in fiction, negative consequences used and framed by the author as a punishment and positive consequences as a reward. Because the author has complete control; they can do that, and that’s a very satisfying thing to do as well. That’s what we’re used to seeing, so people work backward from the conclusion: they suffered negative consequences, therefore they must’ve done something wrong, there must’ve been a flaw in their character that caused this - rather than working forward from the motivations and actions of the characters: Palpatine wanted to rule the galaxy and wanted the Jedi dead, so he outwitted everyone to make that happen, and many terrible things resulted from that.

Also when Anakin is asked to basically spy on Palpatine by the Council, that shows the Jedi aren’t infallible. Then later Mace wants Anakin to kill Palpatine just like Palpatine wanted him to kill Dooku. That muddies Anakin’s perspective of good vs. evil just as much as any “friendship” with Palpatine

I’d still say that’s part of (falling for) Palpatine’s manipulations, though on the Jedi’s part as much as Anakin’s (and the audience’s). Palpatine set up the situation so as to throw Anakin in the middle of his political power play over the Council (part of exacerbating tensions between Anakin and the Jedi in order to isolate him, by making it look to the Council like Anakin was pulling strings to get a position he didn’t earn), and so that the only way to get any kind of accountability from Palpatine was to spy on him. Asking Anakin to spy on the Chancellor was definitely a mistake on the Council’s part (and it’s obvious that at least some of them had reservations about it, especially Mace), but not because “spying is wrong” or any kind of nonsense like that - again, the Jedi were increasingly more accountable to the Chancellor who was increasingly less accountable to anyone, let alone the Jedi, so espionage was the best, if not only, avenue to demand any kind of accountability from him in return - but because Anakin was Anakin and this was what Palpatine expected and intended for them to do. They were playing right into his hands, but unfortunately they had limited options, and they also didn’t know the full extent of it (i.e. that Palpatine was the Sith who wanted to destroy them).

Mace didn’t want Anakin to kill Palpatine - Mace was the one going to kill Palpatine; he wanted to spare Anakin from being involved entirely. And this is definitely a case of people focusing along the protagonist’s perspective - because while it’s entirely intentional that this scene parallels the earlier one with Dooku and makes sense why Anakin reacts the way he does, the audience should be aware of the greater context. The two situations are not actually the same beyond the superficial appearances - Dooku is legitimately disarmed, helpless, and far from his base of political support; Palpatine is far from helpless, still capable of Force lightning, and Emperor in all but name already. Palpatine is manipulating this situation to make it look the same, by playing it up and playing on Anakin’s guilt over killing Dooku in the way that he had - but immediately afterwards it’s clear to both Anakin and the audience that this had been an act, since Palpatine attacks the now-defenseless Mace, but Anakin buys into the sunk cost fallacy and feels he can’t turn back.

So he’s not wrong to tell Ahsoka that she doesn’t have a say in Council business, and Ahsoka accepts that. If she’s not a Jedi, then she doesn’t have the clearance nor any way she could help the Council.

The Jedi not talking to the senators and the senators not talking to the Jedi (Padmé suggested it but got shot down in the RotS novelisation) is something I really like though.

I’ve seen people talk about this as one of Mace’s sins, usually from the perspective of how he killed this father in front of his son. But putting aside how Mace most likely didn’t even know Boba existed at that point, I still don’t think it was wrong. 

Jango, on orders or voluntarily, joined a combat. In both options he was an experienced fighter who we can assume entered the situation aware of the risks. He was also one of the most skilled combatants in that fight, a famed and experienced bounty hunter. Mace singling him out and going after him makes perfect sense. He’s eliminating a threat. He’s eliminating the greatest threat to the other Jedi in that arena, protecting them. Mace is not obligated to put the feelings of one child over the safety of 200 Jedi. 

(This of course doesn’t mean that Boba’s view of the events can’t be quite different. We see him repeatedly claim that Mace murdered (not killed, murdered) his father, which is not how one would usually describe someone dying in a battle like that. Boba being traumatized and angry makes sense, but it doesn’t make him right. The very arc introducing Boba Fett in tcw starts with the quote “Who my father was matters less than my memory of him”. We are directly told that Boba’s view of Jango and his death are unreliable. Boba is an angry, hurt child who has lost his only parent, egged on into vengeance and violence by adults who should be protecting and comforting him. This doesn’t make Jango’s death unjust.)

It could be an interesting AU and there’d be some really fun things to explore, especially as we see Mace is someone who also struggled with righteous anger, which would have been an interesting parallel to Anakin. But there are two reasons I don’t think it would have changed anything: 1.  One of the biggest themes of Star Wars is choice.

(George Lucas interviews, edited by Sally Kline) This means that it doesn’t matter who Anakin’s teacher was, that it still ultimately comes down to that Anakin’s choices were his own.  There can be external influences and opportunities that Anakin might not have otherwise had, there can be some responsibility placed on Anakin’s choices from those, but at the very, very heart of it, it had to be Anakin’s choice and no one else’s. Saying that another teacher would have kept him from falling to the dark is saying that Anakin’s choices weren’t what decided his fate, but instead that he had no actual agency as a character and instead it was all about what other people did, that his own choices didn’t matter, because it was Obi-Wan’s fault somehow. 2.  For all that there’s a similar vibe between Obi-Wan & Anakin vs Mace & Anakin (the banter they each tease each other with), I actually think Obi-Wan was the best possible teacher for Anakin. What Anakin needed was structure, but he also rejected structure because he didn’t really want to listen to it.  What Anakin needed was a strong hand to guide him, to make him sit down and self-examine, but he also rejected any attempts to make him do so, because he didn’t really want to listen to it. That’s the thing about Anakin, he had incredibly strong ideas of what he did and didn’t want and nobody could actually physically make him do anything he didn’t want to do, they could only ask it of him and Anakin decided whether or not to listen. So here’s what any teacher of Anakin’s would be facing:  Someone who desperately wanted all the love in the galaxy to be poured into him, but someone who would not actually benefit from that.  Padme did that and he still turned on her just as easily as anyone else, after all.  They’re also facing someone who desperately wanted structure and an authority figure, but would reject it because he didn’t want to admit to what that said about him and how much he wanted it as an all-consuming thing, not a healthy set of boundaries between himself and the person he cared about. No other character could have walked the line between loving Anakin and being strict with him as well as Obi-Wan could have.  No other character could have found a line between getting on his case when he needed it in a way he could accept it and actually talking to him about it.  Obi-Wan is the character who actually initiates conversations the most in the story, other characters (like Qui-Gon or Mace and certainly Anakin himself) do not do this nearly as much. Obi-Wan is the character who finds the best balance between “I understand why you’re reacting this way” vs “You still need to stop it”, he’s the one who best found the line between the unhealthy attachment Anakin was seeking vs a more balanced love that Anakin could still accept and would want to do as Obi-Wan asked, because they loved each other. Obi-Wan and Anakin complement each other in a way that I’m not sure any other pairing would have done, because they’re either too different or too similar and Anakin would have rejected them.  Like, Anakin’s not a puzzle to solve that has one key answer that will unlock the whole thing, he’s not someone who made choices based on other people.  Anakin had his own personality and his own strong opinions on things, those don’t just magically go away because he had a different teacher. So, you have to navigate the waters of Anakin’s character, who he would have bonded with, who he would have loved, who he would have responded well to–not just what he wanted, but what he actually needed and how much of that he would have actually accepted and listened to–and I think Obi-Wan was the one that was best meant to teach him, the one who could inspire Anakin to want to listen to him, while also seeing him objectively, and actually communicating with him in a way Anakin would respond to. Can you imagine anyone else that Anakin would have a fight with?  Obi-Wan de-escalates situations, and I’m not sure Mace or, say, Qui-Gon would have done the same.  Qui-Gon, as Master & Apprentice showed us, was not someone to de-escalate a fight like that–he repeatedly doesn’t actually talk to Obi-Wan about things that he knows he needs to, he shuts down conversations that he gets angry about, etc.  In The Phantom Menace can you IMAGINE him doing this to ANAKIN??

Mace I think would be too reserved for Anakin’s liking (in as much as he can be incredibly warm at times, I don’t think it would have been enough to win Anakin’s loyalty, this doesn’t make either of them bad, just not a good fit. They do have some good moments, Anakin laughs when Mace praises Artoo’s heroics and says he sees why Anakin trusts him, and I do think there would have been some interesting conversations about anger to be had, especially considering Mace’s own history with it:

Especially when the person appointed by the non-Jedi Chancellor does not meet any qualifications to be a Jedi Master at this point in his career.

I’d remind that person and the non-Jedi Chancellor that believe it or not the Jedi are to decide their own affairs and on their own judgement (plus the Force) will they determine who qualifies for the council.