Just Here To Lurk

"Why didn't anyone give Anakin therapy?"

"Anakin fell because he never got any therapy."

Anakin got 13 years of therapy, 10 which were spent with a dedicated therapist solely assigned to helping him manage his emotions and behavior so he could find a healthy path through life. But Anakin believed that he was the one person in the world who didn't need any therapy because he was better than everyone else who needed therapy and they were just jealous that he didn't need therapy when they tried to suggest that maybe he did in fact need therapy like the rest of them.

And then Anakin proceeded to murder all of the therapists and their children and spent at least two more decades continuing to hunt down any surviving therapists and anyone left who had the ability to BECOME a therapist, so while he was no longer receiving therapy at this point, that's pretty exclusively his own fault.

And even if there WERE some therapists still left alive, they weren't exactly jumping to offer him therapy anymore and it's pretty hard to blame them for that after he murdered them all.

So he mostly just ended up super lucky that a few of those surviving therapists ended up training his son to be a therapist and that his son was able to get through to him when no one else could specifically because this time it was his flesh and blood telling him these things and he was more willing to listen to his own flesh and blood.

In the first movie alone, some of his greatest hits:

Successfully pickpocketed Rick on their first meeting, without Rick so much as joining the dots until later.

Survives a pitched battle on a burning ship without a scratch, and somehow gets the key from a burning hook-handed enemy mook in the process. (“And did I panic? I think not!”)

Survives a pitched battle in the Hamunaptra ruins while drunk, through liberal use of cover and picking off targets at range.

Rolls a Nat 20 on his deception check to avoid being massacred by a large group of hynotised enemies in the museum.

Survives the final pitched battle with the undead (again, through liberal use of cover, hiding and running).

Successfully makes his intelligence roll to translate the Book of Amun Ra (with the Help action from Evie).

Successfully uses the resulting control over the undead mooks to even out the battlefield, including the genius brain move of sending them after Ankh-Su-Namun to both save Evie and distract Imhotep.

Successfully pickpockets a lich while being strangled by him to regain the key and enable Evie to use the book to banish Imhotep altogether.

Yes, he’s fairly flimsy in direct battle, and if at all possible refuses to get to melee range with anybody. So he’s a ranged rogue, and has a tendency to use the environment to his advantage. But he’s clearly designed around Sleight of Hand, Charisma, and a decent sprinkling of Intelligence, and prefers to use object interactions and battlefield control to even out his odds. For all that, though, he fully will stay in melee range if he has no other choice, and take the opportunity to pickpocket the BBEG while he’s at it.

I didn't realise before, but this whole battle starts with Evie telling Jonathan that the only way to kill Imhotep is to open the book and read the spell to banish him. Jonathan says it's locked, they need the key, and Evie then tells him it's in Imhotep's robes.

When Jonathan sends the priest mummies after Ankh-Su-Namun with the spell on the cover (saving both Rick and Evie in the process), Imhotep is coming right for him. However, Imhotep is then briefly disabled by watching the brutal murder of his lover all over again, and Jonathan ... could have run. There's a beat there where Imhotep is completely focused on something else, and Jonathan absolutely has the presence of mind to use that, but he doesn't. Imhotep, now incensed that Jonathan has murdered his lover, promptly spins back around and goes to murder him back, and is only stopped because Rick returns the favour from earlier and saves him.

At which point a lightly-strangled Jonathan stands back up and tells Evie he got the key.

He fucking stayed put on purpose because he knew they needed the key, that Imhotep had the key, and that he was the only person who could fucking pickpocket the BBEG mid-strangulation and get away with it, so long as someone could swoop in before the undead wizard actually killed him. Imhotep is immortal and immune to damage if they don't do something about that. This is a fight of attrition they cannot win. And his sister told him what they needed to stop it, so Jonathan went and got it.

He cheerfully calls himself a coward, and then he goes and fatally pisses off a lich as a distraction, and then stands still to be murdered for it in order to get close enough to pickpocket the immortal pissed off undead. It wasn't that he took the opportunity while being strangled, he set up being strangled in order to have the opportunity.

And like... what the fuck are you talking about? From what we see of canon, healthy coping methods are the thing that the Jedi teach you in the Temple. They are fucking constantly talking about mastering your emotions and they're always checking up on each other and shit.

You could even argue that "flunking out of all the healthy coping mechanism lessons the other Jedi take" was the problem with Anakin, who constantly responded to people asking about his wellbeing as if he was being interrogated and literally, empirically, could not healthily manage his emotional responses to things even when his life depended on it.

Okay jokes aside (please take this meme with a laugh and a grain of salt) but I want to talk about Mandalorian x Jedi pairings and how authors write them.

A rant about Jedi-Mandalorian Pairings, Anti-Jedi attitudes, and how prevelent it is.

So, you might be thinking, "If you don't like it, don't read it", now I do agree with that stance. However, when the author either doesn't tag the fic as having Anti-Jedi sentiments or as being Jedi critical or just doesn't realize that's what they are portraying, it's kinda impossible to do so. It just kinda creeps up on you mid fic.

I am an avid Jedi-Mandalorian pairing reader. I love seeing how Jedi and Mandalorian culture and societies come together. It just seems that many authors think that it is a one-way street where the Jedi in the relationship has to completely integrate and learn Mandalorian customs and the Mandalorian gets to be willingly ignorant to Jedi culture.

I hate coming across this trope of "Jedi that follows the Resol'nare, might or might not be married to a Mandalorian, and is still ostracized for being an aruetii, until they give up their Jedi ways"

It feels icky.

Reading what is essentially a interracial/intercultural relationship and one partner be put down for doing what their culture does is weird. It gets even weirder when the author starts going down the assimilation route. (Clarification: I am talking solely about fics where the author doesn't tag or put a warning that there are these themes in said fic. I am not talking about fics where that is blatantly the focal point)

If I have to see something alone the lines of "maybe the order died for a reason" again I'm going ballistic. What could you possibly mean by that.

Ah yes, because the babies and younglings that got murdered in the creche sooo deserved to die. Or the members of the Agriculture Corps, Medical Corps, Education Corps, and the Exploration Corps, who aren't even overseen by the Jedi High Council but the Council of Reassignment, also deserved to die.

Like I'm starting to think that y'all just don't like the Jedi characters you write about. If that is the cause THAT'S FINE JUST FUCKING TAG IT.

I would like to believe that most of these authors don't have any ill intent when writing like this, but there's definintely a vibe going on. It's just so infuriating because Jedi and Mandalorian cultures could mesh together, or at the very least closely co-exist, really well. They are like two sides to the same coin. So it makes no fucking sense (and is very harmful) to have this way of thinking if you genuinely like these pairings and think they could work.

Afterall isn't that one of the main appeals of these pairings?

The Costumes of Padmé Amidala

Pre-Senate Gown: The Phantom Menace

Lies of P • Sophia [part II]

Jedi Archive Series: Creche Gardens, 5th Centaxday, 3622 ATC. [3 of ?]

Closeups under cut!

Star Wars is hopepunk! not grimdark!

it doesn't mean there's not darkness or evil or bad in the stories or genre, but ultimately it's about the triumph of good or the possibility thereof!

personally, i find the focus on stories in the fascist government point of view loses that - and are honestly a drain - and I stand by that, but also, stop defining morally gray at me people! i do know the meaning even if i'm not writing out the damn definition!

also, morally gray does not automatically mean more interesting or more nuanced! (anyone saying that can fight me.) (i'm a wuss and too chronically ill for this so not really.)