Another Person With Too Many Star Wars Feelings

(star wars republic #57)

the jabiim arc from legends is an underrated goldmine of fucked up content, and specifically the fucked up content i really love to see - Padawans At War, The Chancellor Is Being A Freak In Public, Anakin Skywalker Has Enough Issues To Instantly Kill A Bull Elephant, all of the things that i consider important star wars content. for context, obi-wan and anakin are called in to support other jedi generals and a republic loyalist faction of jabiimi on jabiim, where they’re fighting against separatist-loyal jabiim soldiers, decrying the republic’s imperialism and doing normal things like chanting for jedi blood in the rain. there’s no hope of enforcements and over the course of the arc, every single jedi master (including obi-wan, who fake dies, as obi-wan does every single time he dies) on the planet dies, leaving these kids - the “padawan pack”, a group of orphaned padawans - the only military officials in charge of the campaign, and in this scene, anakin suggests that they all make a final stand in order to delay separatist forces long enough to evacuate the rest of the republic’s forces and officially retreat. Getting The Fuck Out Of Dodge has been an ongoing desire and problem for our band of heroes. but this suggestion is a death sentence for them all, but it buys everyone else a little bit of time to get away.

right after this bit, though, there’s this, which fulfills the quota for The Chancellor Is Being A Freak In Public:

“persistence”, or the fact that palpatine can snap his fingers and the separatists are like cool, let that one singular communication through. that’s just our man on the inside, no biggie.

what’s fun about this is that anakin doesn’t want to leave his fellow padawans, but palpatine leverages his personal relationship with anakin to make it happen; he doesn’t say I AM THE SENATE, he says i’ve put my faith in you time and time again, and then mentions the republic. palpatine does a really great job of making anakin do things he doesn’t like by presenting a worse reality - it’s his whole gambit in ROTS - but in this instance, the worse reality is failing palpatine. anakin’s made it very clear that if he absolutely feels it’s necessary, he’ll disobey orders, so what palpatine does here is really clever, in issuing a command in the one way that anakin can’t resist - staking their relationship, something anakin covets, on it.

when anakin leaves to go guide the evacuation, this is what happens:

because anakin most definitely did not go on to live a good life. in fact he lived the actual opposite of that. he fucked it up big time, dude. this line is like a sucker punch.

but, you know, all of these padawans die. one of these padawans even falls to the dark side in the fight where she’s watching all of her peers die horribly and violently, and then subsequently dies. every single jedi on jabiim died a brutal, horrific death, and at the evacuation, all of the orders fall on anakin because somehow, a nineteen year old is the highest ranking military officer left on the planet, which is really just, like, holy shit. how is that even a thing. but the chancellor promised an evacuation for the republic troops and the (now hunted) jabiimi republic loyalists, and then there’s too few ships to fit everyone on there, and the decision of who to save - the troops or the loyalists - falls on, again, the new highest ranking military officer on the planet, a guy who can’t buy a beer in the USA because he’s too young. anakin has literal seconds to choose what hundreds, if not thousands, of people he’s going to damn to death today, and he chooses to save the republic’s troops, and the loyalists open fire but - and it’s his baby boy time to shine - anakin strangles their leader with the force, which shocks them all so badly the republic forces have enough time to escape.

bonus points, anakin stumbles backwards and apologizes for strangling the guy, because it’s the first time he’s ever used the force to strangle anyone. so those are the circumstances baby darth vader learned his signature move. he even says so, later, while doing something fucked up:

because, well, the really great thing that happened was, after losing literally fucking Everyone, anakin was immediately (and i mean, like, he just walked off the ship from jabiim, immediately) stationed to a healer’s ward to go do healing. this will not be the last time anakin freaks out so badly at the concept of another person dying that he tortures them by trying to keep their hearts beating longer with the force. i rate the jabiim arc 10/10 at setting anakin up with more problems, a thing we all knew he needed.

this is from gambit: stealth, and it’s a pretty accurate summary of What Went Wrong With Anakin Skywalker, which is that this wound of death is just perpetually shredded open, and the method he adopts for coping with the senseless death he is surrounded by is ceaseless violence, because the structure of being at war is inherently, “if you can kill people really, phenomenally well, you do actually have a better chance of not dying, and so do the people around you.” partially anakin is someone who was raised largely by violence - his labor is coerced from him under the threat of a horrible death through an embedded explosive, to some extent he is evidence that overwhelming violence is key to controlling your world - but also he matures as a jedi in an environment where violence is the nature of success. in the world of the war, there is only one way to control whether the people you care about are going to die; and it’s to be the best killer on the battlefield.

he’s knighted as a jedi in large part because of his success on the battlefield; the council, extremely unintentionally, rewards a success that is borne out of anakin’s inability to forgive himself for the deaths of the people he cares for. the council can’t see what’s happening inside anakin’s head (for the most part - i mean, they do literally read his mind in TPM and yoda can sense his grief in AOTC, so for a bunch of psychics they’re really missing the nuclear meltdown poised in front of them) so they don’t realize the extent to which validating mindless violence and anakin’s insane personal standards for himself is… a really bad idea. but it’s a really bad idea, and it goes horrifically wrong, in short order.

anakin tries again in the comics to heal someone who is absolutely going to die, notably after the jabiim arc:

and then also loses his absolute shit when another jedi padawan is going to die:

i’ve talked before that anakin’s fall begins with his mother, because ultimately he can’t stand feeling at fault for her continued enslavement and then her death. he never forgives himself for that; he is contractually unable to handle his own inability to forgive himself for that, and having done what is to him the worst thing he could have ever done leads him down a slippery moral slope of, well, i left my mother in slavery and also let her die, so what’s intentionally killing some random people? but this same guilt is compounded; he replays it every time someone dies, and guess what, a lot of people die very frequently in war.

it’s not that anakin is incapable of losing people, that he’s desperate to possess them so that they’re always his. he watches ahsoka walk away from the jedi order, and aside from asking, “please don’t,” he doesn’t lose his shit and slide into a buckwild baby boy rage and physically bar her from leaving. at nine years old, he struggles, but he’s able to let her go. what shreds him, if the jedi quest novels are anything to go by, is the fact that he left her behind in slavery:

this is from path to truth, and anakin’s thirteen in that novel. it’s desperately fucked up that a thirteen year old has such a raging guilt complex, but it is the thing that’s the ground work for the even larger guilt complex surrounding his mother after her death. his obsession, his preoccupation, is an incredible struggle with accepting the reality of injustice, and slowly his field narrows to an inability to accept death whatsoever. he goes from being unable to stand the guilt he feels for his mother’s enslavement to being unable to stand the guilt of unjust death in wartime to being unable to stand even the premonition of padme’s death, and thus slowly becomes the one thing he could never handle, butchering everything in his path.

anakin lives in an unfair universe and fundamentally cannot handle it; shmi shouldn’t have died, and neither should the clone troopers, and neither should his fellow jedi. these deaths are all unnatural and violent. anakin fundamentally fails to reconcile that injustice, because one of the first things you learn about him in TPM is that he earnestly wants to free the slaves, that he earnestly wants to help people, and when he fails to do this it eats him the fuck alive. the chip on anakin’s shoulder isn’t possessive, controlling, wanting people to align to his idea of them - it’s inescapable guilt. it was always inescapable guilt. he’s luke’s perfect foil; luke’s intense desire to save people, to rescue them, is at the heart of the OT, and he performs a Daring Rescue at least once in all of those films, whether it’s (attempting) to save leia on the death star or (attempting) to save han and leia on bespin or (successfully, to the astonishment of everyone) saving vader on the second death star. helping people is at the core of who luke is; he would cease to be luke skywalker if he couldn’t. and he’s just like his father, who ceased to be anakin skywalker when he couldn’t help people. it’s an identity they share, a fundamental character trait, a piece of themselves too important to violate.

luke repeatedly bangs his head against the wall of helping people in the OT, jetting off for ill-advised rescues both at the end of ESB and ROTJ; both times, his teachers advise against it. he wasn’t ready on bespin to learn the truth, there is no saving darth vader, but luke says it himself - he has to try. he can’t help himself; he’s luke skywalker, and he’s got to rescue you. regardless of whether these decisions are intelligent (they’re really, really not, which is why everyone keeps telling luke not to make these choices) it would be a fundamental violation of luke’s sense of himself to not try. we see in ROTJ that the closest luke comes to the dark side is when he’s actively about to kill his father; because that’s not an action that represents who luke wants to be, so luke pulls back, defines himself again, he is a jedi, like his father before him. luke’s journey through the OT is essentially a long list of his escapades in trying to help people, culminating in the victory of saving the father he’d thought dead and always dreamed of. 

where luke finds himself over the course of the OT, anakin loses himself over the course of the PT. he defines himself in TPM as anakin skywalker, who is a person, not a slave, and then by the end of the prequels he’s lost that. he kneels to a master. he has a new name, a new face, a new voice, a new frame, dictated not by him but by his master. anakin, mired in his inescapable guilt, trapped in that pain, all but sells himself back into slavery for a chance at stopping just the potential that there could be more of it. he lacks the ability to do what luke does, where luke tells genuinely everyone giving him advice to just shove it, he’s going to do what luke is going to do; obi-wan, yoda, the emperor, vader, even leia, they all try to shove luke in the directions they want him to go, and luke tells legitimately everyone to shove it. leia wants him to run away, luke says no. obi-wan says that he needs to kill vader, luke says no. vader says that luke must serve the emperor, luke says no. the emperor says that luke needs to give into his hatred, and luke still manages to say, “fuck off.” anakin lacks that kind of internal confidence, that stability of identity. anakin doesn’t know who the hell he is or what the hell he wants other than, “i want everything to stop hurting all the time,” and man, does it ever fucking show.

this means that their decision to join up with the quest is a bit jarring. like. why not just go on home? they seem to go along with Frodo bcos that's what the book says happened and for no other reason.

however: i think this is actually a knock on consequence of another adaptional change, namely, the decision to make Frodo and Sam good friends.

in the book they are not friends but rather master and servant. they cannot be friends due to the class barrier that exists between them and over the course of the quest said class barrier is broken down; this is a reflection of the shift in British class dynamics that took place following WWI. some of their early interactions are hmm. well I think for a 21st century international audience they would come off a bit icky.

so: the time that might have been spent setting up the Frodo and Merry&Pippin friendship is instead spent showing Frodo and Sam being friends. in all honesty the fact that they are played more as friends whilst still being employer & employee actually makes the dynamic kind of Off in a different way (like. would you want your boss getting involved in your love life? i sure wouldn't) but as the movie plays down the master/servant aspect of their relationship in a big way i think most viewers are not troubled by this.

Maybe Merry and Pippin are just friendly acquaintances of Frodo and Sam. Yes they could have just gone home. Yes they didn’t realise quite how serious this all is.

But someone asked for help and they said yes.

They didn’t know why. They didn’t know what they were signing up for. Perhaps even selfishly they thought it was little more than adventure (though they clearly realise the Black Riders are very bad and very scary).

This is made explicit and played for humour at the council in Rivendell but really it’s true from the very first moment they offer to take Frodo to the ferry. It is also of the same kind of heroism as Frodo’s “I will take the Ring to Mordor. Only… I do not know the way”.

The hobbits all represent this beautiful tragedy of a) to a large degree being taken advantage of by people who do far better understand the stakes and risks and are unwilling or unable to make the attempt themselves b) the very innocence that narratively facilitates them being naive enough to be taken advantage of is simultaneously the essential source of their heroism and the hope they represent to the rest of the characters (and the audience/reader).

Heroism is not only in slaying great beasts or defeating mighty armies. Heroism is not limited to the strong and the brave and the wise.

There’s this contrast between his depictions in the original trilogy and nowadays where it all feels way more mythologized like. It’s Star Wars writing about the fact that it’s Star Wars if that makes sense. Writing itself around the hype that it’s Star Wars and it’s Darth Vader and he’s cool riiiiight. In tasteful doses it’s fine but now it’s like Lucasfilm needs to make Vader cool before he can be interesting.

The point about Vader’s depictions I’m more iffy about.

I personally think it’s a dynamic of needing both and both should be more fully fleshed out.

I am 100% on the Vader fan boy hype train. I also think it’s actually important and additive to his characterisation. My image of Anakin/Vader is that he sacrificed absolutely everything for power, specifically violent, aggressive power.

He wanted the power to control life and death and he got it in the worst, least helpful way possible ie he is capable of killing everyone and anything and he himself is unkillable when all he really wanted to do was save one person and now he wishes he could die but fate, his own guilt, Palpatine, whatever won’t let him.

The tragedy - in my mind - of Vader’s Faustian bargain isn’t that he didn’t get what he asked for, but that he was tragically wrong in what he asked for.

So a) I think it’s cool and badass that Vader aura farms and mercs people and b) I think it’s key to his story (and Star Wars more generally) that this incredible power to destroy is meaningless and won’t achieve anything good and will be undone not by someone even stronger and better at fighting but by the redemptive power of love.

It is also - side bar - why I hate hate hate hate hate it when Vader loses or is even challenged by a fight. If Obi-Wan can beat Vader in a duel what the fuck is the deal with putting everything on the twins? If Cere Junda can actually put up a fight why aren’t the remaining scattered Jedi getting their shit together and just dog piling him?

I think the story works better when that isn’t an option - not because of contrived happenstance - but because the metaphysics of the universe are such that Vader = death and the only thing that can overcome that is love.

However - I do think this needs to be contrasted with the horror that is Vader’s internal world. Being Vader should be the worst, most horrific, most pointless, most nauseatingly pitiable existence imaginable.

The point - to me - is both the reality of being Vader is Anakin’s own worst case scenario AND the contrast.

No relationships. No attachments. No freedom. Alone in every way that matters. Cut off from everything and everyone literally physically as well as metaphorically. Stripped of all humanity. Nothing more or less than Sidious’s pet monster, a super weapon to be pointed and unleashed.

He knows that and he hates that more than anything except himself which is why he wallows, why to some extent he revels in his own suffering because punishment is something you can only do living breathing creatures, guilt is something a person is capable of. A lightsaber feels no guilt. A bomb feels no shame.

And he’s a person and his name is… Vader.

Basically every scene with Vader should be: badass exterior shot while he looks awesome and murders everyone and then immediate snap cut to some version of that scene from interstellar where Matthew Mccounaghey (sp?) is screaming and crying while he looks into the past.

But also because is not quite fitting , what a giant treasure you Anakin greedy bastard, an absurd sum of,,,,,-checks notes-,,,,Three persons?

Reminds me of how there was this kinda study we read ages ago in Animal Production Behavior class, that, in summary, theorized cows could only count up to around 40, because they apparently only cared for 40 individuals in their herd and if one outside these 40 is gone they don't mind. This really dubious, btw, don't trust it.

Either way, cows are more dragon like that Anakin if we're talking just about greed.

When the subject of "Anakin wants to have control, and control those who cares for" surfaces, I think is easy to get blindsided by the very end of ROTS and how Vader carries his dutiea for the empire.

The way Anakin wants control (regarding people) is not in a "I want to control what you do, where you are, what you think, who you associate yourself with", this man wants to control reality itself in a way so his loved ones don't die. There's a big difference here, he wants to control variables around them.

obi-wan has suffered more than anyone in the world, obi-wan is the kindest and most heroic person in the galaxy, obi-wan is a space jesus, obi-wan is the most important person in anakin's life, and in everyone's lives, and the force itself loves him more than anyone, really — for me, all of this makes little sense because in his setting obi-wan is really such an average guy

i don't see the point in giving him a tragic backstory or heroic deeds in the supplementary materials, because his story is simply not about that. in the main story (g-lucas' movies), he is one of a thousand jedi raised in the same environment, with the same customs and values, in the safety and privilege of the temple on coruscant; he doesn't have any unique personal code or worldview. obi-wan is called the ideal jedi, but the truth is that being an ideal jedi means being a perfect cog in the system and following the code without question — and watching the movies, i can easily imagine that there are probably hundreds more such obi-wans behind the scenes; and this is not me being mean to obi-wan btw, it's just that he's the token jedi, he shares his flaws and shortcomings with the rest of the order

i also can’t say that obi-wan suffered in any special way or suffered more than anyone else: he shares his trauma of losing the jedi order equally with yoda and with the hundreds of the jedi who survived order66. his trauma of losing a master or losing an apprentice to the dark side is also nothing unique within the franchise: the vast majority of characters lost a parental figure in sw, yoda's apprentice turned to the dark side. and i don't think raising anakin was traumatic for obi-wan; no matter how much people insist that he was left with the most troublesome, problem child, that's far from the truth, and the experience was more traumatic for anakin, really

obi-wan is also not the hero of the story; he is the archetypal failed or wise mentor, depending on the trilogy. in the prequels, obi-wan is just an ordinary jedi, even though his abilities are far above average, but his lifestyle, beliefs and worldview are, again, quite ordinary. after the loss of the order, he took on a new mission and spent 20 years training in the force and observing luke skywalker; but he did not try to rebuild the order himself, did not help the rebellion or the surviving jedi in any way, and did not try to personally kill vader or sidious. his role in the story is to train and fail anakin, to train and lie to luke, because these two are the main characters of the saga, not obi-wan; and there is nothing offensive to obi-wan himself in this, each character has their own role in the story and that's okay

And this isn’t his full time gig!! He does this in his spare time!! Between fighting a war, handling a successful long distance marriage, taking care of a teenager, and entertaining a Sith Lord for a Chancellor!

Like:

With Resolute out of rotation for a refit, she stood on the bridge of Indomitable, one of the next generation of cruisers to come out of the Allanteen VI shipyards. Cruisers that were faster and more responsive than ever before, thanks to her Master’s—what had the chief shipwright called it? Oh yes. Tinkering. Thanks to Anakin’s tinkering, the new vessels were a definite cut above the first Republic Cruisers that had rolled out of production for service in this war against Dooku and his Separatist Alliance.

The differences had been noted, and were talked about whenever and wherever military types crossed paths—in battle, in briefings, sharing some chitchat and a drink in this mess or that one, or even the occasional civilian bar. The Jedi who fought on the front lines were talking about them, too. Everyone who relied on the massive Republic warships knew that their odds of survival had increased because Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker liked to muck about with machines—when he wasn’t busy being the scourge of the Separatists.

- Star Wars: Clone Wars: Gambit - Stealth by Karen Miller

The entire shock and tragedy of Anakin’s fall, and the drama of Mustafar, is premised on Anakin being the best and brightest of the Jedi.

A literal super hero who stands out amongst even other heroes.

He’s smarter and stronger and braver and kinder and more talented than any of the other Jedi. Writing Anakin as a Batman in DC polymath Mary Sue is far more inline with canon than almost anything else.

That’s why it’s so shocking when he falls. That’s why Mustafar represents this cosmic 1 in 1 million chance of hope where by the barest and baldest luck Vader is at least partially halted.

I also think it’s because Anakin’s flaws and weaknesses are hard to do justice to in a dramatic format. I think even the movies struggle with this (amongst other things).

Anakin makes terrible decisions about who to trust. In the end he makes truly awful decisions all round but they’re not irrational choices. They’re not stupid choices.

But that’s hard to show in a compelling way. So instead a lot of fic just makes him stupid and so emotionally crippled that he’s incapable of doing anything. Makes him incompetent.

Lucifer’s fall was tragic because he was the brightest of the angels. Lancelot’s fall was tragic because he was the greatest of the Round Table knights.

I’m tired of seeing new Jedi introduced just for them to be brutally killed soon after.

I want to see Jedi live. Before, during, and after the empire. I want to see Jedi continue to be Jedi, to feel proud and strong due to being Jedi, to not inevitably find that the only way to survive is to leave behind being Jedi forever. I want to see Jedi passing down their culture to the next generation, despite their fears. I want to see Jedi outliving those that would see them destroyed, again, and again, and again. In a world where a living Jedi is more miraculous than a dead one, watching yet another dramatic death doesn’t feel dramatic, or climactic, or interesting. I just feel tired.

The Jedi being dead - that they’re dead now or will be as soon as we know they’re a Jedi - is a narrative necessity for the original 6 films.

They’re gone. They’re not coming back. We have to save ourselves.

The fact that the Jedi change - encapsulated in Luke disregarding his teachers, embracing love, contradicting what a PT Jedi would or should do - is a GOOD thing in the OT.

It is the essential step change that saves the universe. A good Jedi who remained true to what the Jedi were would have moved past their attachments and killed Vader and doomed us all.

But that is because the movies engage with these ideas at a much more conceptual or iconoclastic level. The Jedi are more an idea, an institution, a plot device, than they are a living breathing collection of characters with their own lives and interiority.

But every time a new fic or a new comic or a new tv show or a new movie adds a Jedi (or stormtrooper or whatever) the narrative re-orients and centers (to some extent) this new character and gives them a far greater degree of agency and interiority than any of the PT Jedi (other than Anakin and Obi-Wan) ever got.

It’s just a function of medium and screen time/word count.

But in order to maintain some kind of consistency these characters have to get dropped into the same essential narrative context.

What would it mean for there to be a Jedi or set of Jedi who continue to be proud and strong Jedi, set at any point between episode 3 and 4?

How does that story work?

Because being a Jedi isn’t just a set of personal or communal beliefs and practices. It is ALSO an institution with a purpose, a mission that every Jedi is raised to believe.

To be good. To do good. To fight injustice.

That necessitates conflict. Confrontation with the Empire.

That necessitates death. Inevitably it means death because there are more troopers and ships and bombs and blasters and more injustice than even the Jedi can stop.

That’s how - by the time we get to episode 4 - we find Luke in a universe where the Jedi are dead and they’re not coming back. We have to save ourselves.

The alternatives are (simplistically) twofold: for some reason your Jedi remain true to what that means, trains padawans, fights injustice but survive and propagate. How? How do you make that fit narratively? You relegate them to the sidelines of the conflict but that itself would be in tension with what it means to be a Jedi. They don’t sit on the sidelines. They don’t prioritise themselves over others.

And so you still wind up in a story - whether the author acknowledges it or not - where the characters in question leave behind large parts of what it means to be a Jedi.

(You also are effectively just telling the Yoda and Old Ben story all over again).

Or the Jedi win. They win and they win and they win and they win and they never get caught and they never die.

So what then happens in episode 4? How does that story fit in with the movies? What were these Jedi doing when Alderaan was destroyed, when Hoth was conquered, when Palpatine was torturing the only Jedi willing to confront evil its own lair?

In order for this story to exist in Star Wars, to be part of the same fabric, you need to answer that question and I don’t see how there can be a satisfying answer that allows them to remain “true” Jedi.

But it is grim and eventually boring that every story about Jedi survivors after order 66 ends the same way.

But that’s because sometimes the story has been told and it’s beautiful and it’s finished.

Disney - any corporation really - can’t stop. The story can’t be finished. Because we need more content because we need more views because we need more users because we need more growth.

Always and forever.

The reconciliation between the capitalist priority and the narrative limitation is to tell the same story over and over and over again.

And even there we see drift. I think Disney’s handling of Obi-Wan as a character is a fascinating example of very genuine attempts to make a character richer and more fully realised and empathetic but it then bumps up against an existing and immovable narrative context that drastically reinterprets those writing choices and drives a viewer (certainly this viewer) to an interpretation that is clearly VASTLY different to what the writing intends.

I find the projection of the Jewish experience onto the Jedi interesting. I kind of get it (as an outsider) but it’s not my first (or even tenth) obvious analogy. That is entirely because I bring my own priors and assumptions. It is clearly a valid parallel (in as much as anyone can read whatever they want into fiction, death of the author and all that) but I do think it is - outside of the persecution post episode 3 - a relatively weak one.

Jews have been arbitrarily and unfairly persecuted for literally thousands of years. They didn’t have a solid 1000 years of being the most prestigious and respected group of people in the world whom everyone recognised and listened to. They don’t have or lay claim to any kind of moral superiority and mission that justifies them having power over others. They also aren’t a singular, coherent, organised institution, with a centralised authority that tells them what to do.

It’s why the parallel with the catholic church is more compelling to me. But I’m catholic so again that is largely just my own priors.

I can see how a story about a small group of survivors holding onto their identity in the face of persecution can be compelling. A story about how the act of simply being true to who you are, being brave enough to have and raise children, to believe in a future in which they can grow up freely can be beautiful and how it could echo some parts of the jewish experience.

But I don’t think it works as a Jedi story constrained by the narrative of Star Wars.