Fanatics like yourself tend to view any sort of discipline as abuse, so your kids are going to grow up to be horrible spoiled abusive bullies, just like your lord and savior Satanakin Buttfucker. And when they inevitably get punished by the world because you wonât punish them, youâll yell at the village for not raising your brats for you. Sounds like a horrible parent to me.
You know what, nonny, I think you need to let it go!
You donât seem to understand that your side of the fandom has been winning for the past 13 years now! The original EU canon novelizations for the PT and OT, which were largely approved and/or edited by George Lucas as an extension of canon for the movies, is considered Legends now since Dave Filoni, Bob Iger, Pablo Hidalgo, and eventually Disney took over the franchise in 2012, and started rewriting everything that made Luke, Anakin/Vader, Padme, Leia, and the Skywalker family line at all complex, relatable, and interesting characters, in spite of their flaws. The complex, dynamic, nuanced, morally gray, and tragic characters that the Skywalkers once were has been getting erased to put them into narrow categories of good and evil, so that characters like Kenobi, Rey, Ahsoka, the Republic government, and the Jedi Council can be elevated and sanitized. Never mind the fact that the Skywalkers were the main characters of George Lucasâs series. For better or worse, the series was about Luke Skywalker and Anakin Skywalker. You have won by scaring off half this fandom and George Lucas! A lot of our canon, the original canon that was true to George Lucasâs vision, has been actively getting retconned in the past 13 years since the release of the 2008 TCW movie and TV series.
Yes, I know that George Lucas was involved in the running of that movie and show for the first few seasons, which is why he actually stuck to some of his points about how, in spite of being well-meaning, the Jedi Council fucked up and contributed to the fall of their Order, the fall of Anakin, and the fall of Dooku. However, Anakin, Padme, and Obi Wan are largely different characters than they were in the PT and OT movies and novelizations because of Dave Filoni, Pablo Hidalgoâs, and Disneyâs hatred of the prequels, or desire to cater to the fandom that wanted Vader to be a male power fantasy cartoon villain.
Obi Wan actually comes off as more of a dick than he was in the PT films/novelizations. For all of his flaws of being blindly hypocritical, a coward in regards to his own emotions, and rather self-righteous, at the very least Obi Wan was generally pretty consistent in sticking to the Jedi Orderâs rules until the end. He was wrong, and the end of Revenge Of the Sith showed his cowardice and underlying vindictiveness in regards to Anakin. In TCW, while heâs still too dedicated to the Order, he also had a crush on another woman, who he almost let go for the Order, but then he openly blasts Anakin for getting married to Padme behind the Councilâs back, which doesnât make consistent sense with the timeline either because, even if Obi Wan low key knew about Anakinâs relationship with Padme, he clearly never mentioned that he did to either of them, or even admitted to himself that he knew. In Revenge of the Sith, when he tells Padme that Anakin has fallen to the dark side and realizes sheâs pregnant, he says âIs Anakin the father? Iâm so sorry.â So like, at the back of his mind, Obi Wan knew that something had to be going on between Anakin and Padme, but he never mentioned it because he did care about Anakin like a little brother. It also was kind of his fault that they ended up falling for each other since he knew that Anakin was head over heels in love with Padme in AOTC before allowing him to go to guard her alone on Naboo, but still requested for him to take the mission, anyway, so it would look bad for him as a padawan master in front of Yoda if heâd ever found out. Thereâs no subtlety in his characterization anymore.
Padme is relegated to a tertiary character, so Filoni can add in Ahsoka as the main lead in TCW instead, and when Padme does appear on screen, she sometimes comes across as being a rather two-faced mean girl and strong womanâąïž
They flanderdized Anakinâs negative traits to foreshadow Vader a billion times over, even when what heâs doing is justified, and/or isnât any worse than Obi Wan, Ahsoka, and the rest of the Order is doing in TCW (08-21). Whereas he was just more of a clingy insecure type attachment in regards to Padme in the movies and novels before falling to the dark side, they took that one scene where he choked her in a blind rage, paranoia, and frantic effort to avoid abandonment when he was high on the dark side and dissociating after seeing Obi Wan step out of the ship looking ready to kill him right as Padme was telling him she loved him but couldnât be with him, and tried to make his entire relationship with Padme look like a mess of him being a toxically masculine, possessive, and controlling jackass.
While it was not an excuse for force choking her in the movie at all, that clearly was a crime of passion he made in his blind rage, fear and paranoia when he was completely out of his damned mind after having a mental breakdown on the high of the dark side for the first time, not this deliberate murder attempt because she âno longer fit his narrative.â The point was that it was entirely out of character for Anakin to do and to show how fucking out of his mind he was. If thatâs just âwho he always wasâ with Padme all along, then what was the tragedy in his fall? What was there for Padme to ever love? What was there for Luke to ever save?
Additionally, there was also this recurring trait in the narrative of the OT and PT movies and novelizations that Anakin became so deferential with his desires, his needs, his emotional/mental health, and his moral compass in regards to trying to fit in, please, and/or protect the ones he loved with Padme, Obi Wan, and the Jedi Order, only ever rebelling to try to be true to his own heart in secret, that it eventually caused him to have a complete mental breakdown in Revenge of the Sith. If he finds it so easy to publicly rebel and stick up for himself and his beliefs, then the sympathy and tragedy of his fall is also undermined. Anakinâs downfall was that he was too afraid to displease Padme, Obi Wan, his mom, and eventually even Palpatine to the point that his loyalties and trust between the people he loved became confused and fractured when he had a mental breakdown in Revenge of the Sith. This is consistent with what we see in regards to his conflicted heart between Luke and Sidious in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi Order.
Anakinâs greatest downfall is how he has no sense of faith in himself. Even when heâs high and deluded on the dark side, heâs not interested in world domination unless he has a family member or loved one to defer to. Even though Sidious manipulated him to turn on everyone he ever loved in his fear and desperation, and openly treats him like garbage after he gets burned alive and put in that suit, he still has trouble letting go of his love for this guy he logically knows is the worst because Anakin Skywalkerâs sense of self-worth is so low that heâll latch on to anyone who was nice to him once forever, for better or worse.
Anakin/Vader was very much a Byronic Hero, a tragic hero, and a tragic villain with clear signs of deep emotional/psychological damage and mental illness that clearly never got properly treated in the narrative. Even if C-PTSD and BPD werenât the official mental illnesses that he was diagnosed with in canon, it is clear that George Lucas and the writers of the OT and PT movies and novelizations incorporated several of those symptoms into his characterization. Not that mental illness is an excuse for crimes, but it makes sense why they would become dangerous when the person suffering from them is constantly in an abusive and oppressive environment of war from which options for healthy support, escape, and mental health treatment are limited to non-existent.
Then, you have Dave Filoni and Pablo Hidalgo openly admitting in the DVD behind the scenes that they didnât like Anakinâs portrayal in the prequel movies because it was âtoo whiney,â so they deliberately rewrote him to be a âmix of Han Solo and Lukeâ because they wanted a more macho male power fantasy of the young man who became Darth Vader that made his fall seem more inevitable to cater to fans like you, nonny, who bitched that Anakin was âtoo whineyâ in the prequels for years, rather than just taking his abuse from Obi Wan and the Council like a âgood victim,â and sucking it up.
That has been how theyâve been rewriting Anakin/Vader since TCW (08), and itâs never going to stop because Disney is a cash cow that keeps catering to fans like you who wanted for this character to be the male power fantasy villain you thought you were going to get when you first watched âNew Hope,â and are disappointed that you never fully did or will be able to get, even under Disney, if only because they canât totally retcon his backstory by outright saying the Jedi Council and Republic did nothing wrong since Anakin/Vader wouldnât have any reasons to turn on them at all.
So when I actually point out that the writers of the Disney version of the now âofficial canonâ Star Wars actually did something right in terms of staying true to George Lucasâs original vision in an Obi Wan Kenobi comic by showing us how both he and the Council were very emotionally negligent parents to Anakin Skywalker who didnât do enough to protect him, your response is to still deny that they did anything wrong, even though the narrative of your fucking Disneyâąïž Star Wars canon is outright showing you they did wrong by allowing him access to Palpatine alone!
Iâm not a parent yet, but how is it good parenting to isolate children from their families and friends, to refuse to allow them to form healthy attachments, to refuse to allow them to develop any sort of faith in their sense of self, to refuse to allow them to have their own personal lives and relationships outside of just you, to teach them how to use lethal weapons, to completely gaslight, deny and shame them for having completely valid concerns, fears, desires, and negative emotions as âdangerous,â âselfish,â and âgreedy,â and to completely refuse to emotionally and/or financially support them if they decide they want to leave, so they can groom them to be submissive soldiers for their order?
I could understand if Anakin and these kids were fully consenting, emotionally, physically, and mentally mature and stable adults who had full knowledge of what being a Jedi entailed, and who knew they could leave anytime without being cut off, impoverished, and/or shamed by the rest of the Order of âpeacekeepers of the galaxy.â However, thatâs not how they are running things in the prequels. What the Jedi system was doing to Anakin and these other members in the Order was abusive. Abuse is about breaking down and isolating victims to make them feel totally dependent on their abuser. Child endangerment and neglect happens when their well-being is risked and/or overlooked. You canât deny that is what happened to Anakin Skywalker and these other recruits in the prequels. You just canât.
If any adult was caught treating their kids in any of the ways the Jedi Council treated Anakin and those other recruits under their care in the prequels, they wouldnât just get off with CPS for being âwell-meaningâ in their abuse, endangerment, neglect, and exploitation of them for warfare and politics of âthe greater good.â They would be facing serious charges and jail time.
The entire Order didnât deserve to be mass murdered in Order 66. Nor was Anakin right to participate in it as an adult. Nor does it mean that he didnât deserve negative consequences for it. That was wrong and he does hold responsibility for making that choice, regardless of the mitigating factors of poor emotional/mental health, limited support, and limited escape options. No, the Council are not responsible for him making that choice to turn on them. However, they are responsible for allowing him to speak alone with Palpatine when he was a child under their care and for condoning and practicing that systematic abuse, corruption, emotional neglect, and oppression that created that emotional/mental instability, anger, desperation, moral confusion, pressure, and those insecurities in Anakin that lured him in that dark direction.
