kirlenawrites

[kirlenawrites]

Anakin & Obi-Wan - Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith Novelization by Matthew Stover

[kirlenawrites]

for jedi to be like no attachments :/ but then their main way of teaching is a one on one apprenticeship spanning over many years where they spend almost 24/7 with each other. like. girl

[kirlenawrites]

I’m sort of curious why you ship obikin? I personally don’t, and you have asks open so I wanted to hear your thoughts.

Sure, why not!! Thanks for the ask <3

Most of the draw for me comes from a combination of Revenge of the Sith (specifically the choreography of the Mustafar fight, which I’ll explain more in a moment) Deborah Chow’s work in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, and Matthew Stover’s portrayal of them in the Revenge of the Sith novelization.

On a base level, their characters simply can’t exist without the other, which is deeply interesting in and of itself. In A New Hope, Obi-Wan has to mentor Anakin’s son and give him Anakin’s lightsaber after saving it for all those years, and he has to fall to Vader by his own choice. He has to forgive Anakin and still love him after all that time to teach him how to become a Force ghost when Anakin is dying in RotJ. And at the end of the movie, it’s an overwhelmingly happy moment to see them together again as ghosts smiling, standing with one another, and watching over Luke. Their characters have been so closely intertwined since the original films, and every bit of content we’ve gotten since then capitalizes on that so much.

I hope you don’t mind me bringing pictures because… I have pictures.

Coming around to prequels content, one of my favorite Obikin tidbits comes from a 2019 interview with Nick Gillard (Revenge of the Sith fight choreographer who did the work for the Mustafar fight). Here’s a screenshot from an article discussing the interview with a quote from Gillard:

You can read more in-depth about that interview here in a great post by @/gffa.

There are more key quotes from the interview here, including bangers such as:

“I did write it [Mustafar fight] like a husband and wife having a fight. Anakin thinks Obi is maybe having an affair with Padmé at that point. So he’s already gone to the dark side. And for Obi, it’s just about trying to absorb it long enough that he can get him back.”

“My take on the whole duel was that Obi-Wan is the central character in that duel. He wouldn’t try and kill Anakin. The way I saw that fight was like having a fight with your girlfriend. That she’s just lost it and that she’s coming at you with everything she’s got. […] So you try to defend her as long as you can until she breaks down. Then you can give her a cuddle.“

These quotes admittedly make me giggle a bit because. What do you mean you framed it like a husband and wife/boyfriend and girlfriend having a fight. That imagery is just so funny to me. But seriously, I do think it really emphasizes how much they still do love each other even as they’re fighting so brutally—Obi-Wan can’t bring himself to do anything more than defend, and the idea that Anakin fighting Obi-Wan equates to him fighting the good side of himself is heartbreaking. The fact that fighting him is literally like fighting part of himself is insane.

Anakin’s fear of Padmé and Obi-Wan having an affair is also mentioned in that interview, and funny enough, the Obidala affair was actually supposed to be canon in from what we can tell is George Lucas’s original draft of the prequels. It sounds almost absurd because of the prequels we ended up getting, simply because Padmé and Obi-Wan as we know them—would just never do that. Even if they were framed to have feelings for each other, I don’t believe their characters as they are could ever bring themselves to act on those feelings because they love Anakin too much. He’s undoubtedly the axis of the prequel trio. What was originally supposed to be a love triangle with Padmé as the axis ends up looking much more like a love triangle with Anakin as the axis.

But anyway! That’s the movie side of it. I don’t know if you’ve read the novelization or not, but personally I like it even more than the movie. That’s not to say the movie isn’t great, but what does it for me is how much Stover gets Anakin’s character. He makes Anakin… make more sense? He makes his motivations and his fall as a whole more sympathetic and understandable to the reader, I think. He also expands on Anakin’s relationships with Obi-Wan, Padmé, and Palpatine, and the way in which he portrays Obi-Wan's relationship with him and their feelings about each other in general is very… oddly romantic? Tragically romantic? Their banter is sweet to read in the first several chapters regardless of whether you view them platonically or not, too.

(Okay look I have a lot of pictures of this book, it ruined me as a human being)

Finally, there’s the Obi-Wan Kenobi show, which is entirely about Obi-Wan and Anakin in Anakin’s Vader era. Once again, you have a lot of comments from the creator elevating that husband and wife/boyfriend and girlfriend sort of dynamic brought up by Gillard:

First of all: ok girl wow 😳 This topic came up in the interview because Chow was asked how she managed to convince the Disney execs to let her bring the character of Darth Vader into the show—because, you know, it’s Darth Vader! The face of the Star Wars saga! You can’t just throw him into anything (or, well, you could, I wouldn’t complain)—and this was her selling point. A show about Obi-Wan would be incomplete without Anakin because Anakin is his biggest love story and his biggest heartbreak in the series. Both the OG and prequel trilogies really are defined by the relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin—everything begins and ends with them. And it was heart wrenching to watch this scene in the OWK show after all the movies have given us.

”I am not your failure, Obi-Wan” is a major line in their story. That’s the scene where we see Obi-Wan finally accept that his Anakin is gone and the best way for him to keep loving him is to honor him and love him as he was (shown when we see Obi-Wan in the OG trilogy speaking of Anakin to Luke so fondly, telling him he was the “best star pilot in the galaxy” and “a good friend”). And Anakin as he knew him briefly showed himself to give him that peace. In that scene, the red of Vader’s lightsaber reflected on his face recedes and is replaced by the blue glow of Obi-Wan’s saber as he says the words “I am not your failure, Obi-Wan. You didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker—I did.” …at which point the red glow returns to prominence. But however briefly when he said those words, he was Anakin and he was giving Obi-Wan permission to let go of the idea that he killed Anakin, or caused him to become Darth Vader. He was the only person who could give Obi-Wan that freedom, and he did. In the strangest way possible, he freed Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan was finally able to return the favor and free him years later in death, allowing them to reunite and to free Anakin of his broken-down body and look like himself again as a young man before he fell.

I don’t have a picture in my camera roll, but I believe if memory serves, Palpatine tells Dooku in the RotS novelization that Anakin will never fully be in the camp of the Sith as long as Obi-Wan lives, which is why Dooku targeted Obi-Wan so fiercely in the duel against him and Anakin and then Palpatine asked Anakin to leave Obi-Wan so they could evacuate the ship, at which point Anakin glared at him and said “His fate will be the same as ours.” Palpatine was right about that. Anakin is never able to let go of his past when he’s Vader, and largely it is because Obi-Wan still lives. Even once Obi-Wan finally dies and joins the Force before Anakin’s eyes, Vader doesn’t feel triumph or finally cut Anakin Skywalker out—he is said in another novelization to be felt light years away by Yoda as a beacon of loneliness and grief in the Force. Luke is the last piece he has of both Padmé and Obi-Wan, because while Luke is of course Padmé’s son, it was Obi-Wan who taught him, and thus Vader repeats multiple times in the OG trilogy that Luke has a lot of Obi-Wan's influence in him. It’s Luke who enables Anakin to break free from the chains of the dark side and defeat his abuser and groomer after years of manipulation.

That’s all to say—the story of Obi-Wan and Anakin is so rich, tragic, beautiful, and expansive, it’s easy to feel drawn to it in any capacity; I specifically see the possibility of them loving one another in a romantic light due to all those aforementioned references to them being deliberately set up in the story as lovers, as well as the fact that their dynamic is just incredibly fun and interesting and it’s easy to explore the possibilities of them in all different contexts. They’re uniquely fucked up and obsessive about each other with Anakin being (paraphrasing) blinded by his feelings for his old Master (as said by Palpatine) and Obi-Wan essentially having Anakin and only Anakin as an outlet for his grief after Qui-Gon’s death. The best part about them is that their story never ends. It started with the original trilogy with Alec Guinness and James Earl Jones, bloomed in the prequels with Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen, and has since been revisited and expanded upon over and over in novels, comics, and of course, the TV shows bringing back Ewan and Hayden. It’s possible they’ll even be on the screen as Obi-Wan and Anakin again—Hayden is already confirmed to be set for Ahsoka Season 2, and it’s entirely possible Ewan appears alongside him in more of Ahsoka’s Clone Wars flashbacks. The love story stretches over so much media and material over the course of nearly 50 years (48 currently) that it’s impossible to run out of ideas for them. The story tells itself.

[kirlenawrites]

ANAKIN SKYWALKER AHSOKA: PART 5 "SHADOW WARRIOR" (2023)

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Anakin

[kirlenawrites]

Luke saying “you’ll find i’m full of surprises” to Vader before losing his lightsaber and falling down some stairs is such a life mood

[kirlenawrites]

[kirlenawrites]

I am laughing and crying at the same time, Obi-Wan having to deal with the daughter of two of his dearest friends, that he can still say, “You remind me of her.” but he can’t say, “You remind me of him.” and it’s not because she’s only like Padme, but because Obi-Wan can’t even look at his feelings for Anakin, they’re like staring into the sun, they’ll burn him blind if he goes near them, so he can only compare her to Padme, stubborn and clever, and try to just breathe around the white hot pain of how her smartass remarks and fondness for droids and her getting into everything reminds him of Anakin.  He can’t even think about Anakin, it would undo him, so he focuses on how like Padme Leia as.

[kirlenawrites]

joan baez / a new hope / revenge of the sith / the empire strikes back

[kirlenawrites]

Saw some jokes about Obi-Wan being a toxic boy mom and must take this to the extreme. Sometime during Anakin's teen years, when they're constantly at odds and fighting, Obi-Wan joins a holonet support forum for parents. He's read all the books on "Bonding (And Unbonding) with Your Padawan" but they're not helping. Anakin isn't his son, but he'll take any advice he can get at this point. The forum starts out helpful, but devolves over time.

Someone mentions being sad that eventually their baby is gonna get married and move away and Obi-Wan goes ":) thank god I never have to worry about that."

"Not interested in relationships?"

"He is but he swore an oath to me when he was 9 to be single forever. (Religious/cultural reasons.)"

The other parents have a, "wtf?" Reaction but one mom immediately messages and invites him to a private forum. Their freak matches and Obi-Wan is immediately embraced by an echo chamber of poor boundaries and werid possessiveness. Obi-Wan is a bit concerned and wary, but the other parents are so nice and helpful and honestly, this whole having a padawan thing can get lonely. Other masters don't understand the struggle of training Anakin Skywalker! Their padawans were Easy in comparison.

Anyway a couple years pass and Obi-Wan overhears (or, let's be real, was convinced by the other parents to put spyware on Anakin's comms, because these people Would do that sort of fucked up shit) Anakin's plans to get secret married. He immediately turns to the forum in a panic, because Anakin is Leaving and Getting Married. To a politican!

The forum goes, "you must stop this wedding. Do whatever it takes because otherwise you're losing your boy Forever."

(Obi-Wan did explain at one point that Anakin isn't his son, but his student/ward. This had the same holding power as a leaf vs a semi truck. He just refers to him as "my boy" all the time, so the other toxic parents just shrug and go, "he's one of us. Kinda, sorta, whatever.")

Anyway he comes back like a week later and goes, "good news, he's not marrying her."

"How's you do it?"

"I offered to marry him instead."

"What the actual fuck." <- the only moment of self reflection these people have ever had. Obi-Wan is immediately banned from this group.

[kirlenawrites]

Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

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(opening the author’s works page after finishing a fic) and if im lucky they’ll have written this exact same fic but different a bunch more times

[kirlenawrites]

the hours between 8-11pm should be reusable. optional mini time loop you can rewind and start over if you had more tasks to do or another book to read or the first three hours hanging out w your friend weren’t enough

[kirlenawrites]

once again thinking about how much obi-wan loved anakin, even after everything, he never stopped loving anakin—his pupil, his brother, his complementary half, his self-described failure:

after padmé’s passing, with the twins safe and his self-imposed duty to anakin fulfilled, obi-wan could’ve washed his hands of everything and everyone and fucked off forever to either process or repress his trauma in peace, but instead he said:

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith — Matthew Stover (2005)

obi-wan really spent the majority of his life dedicated to anakin and his children, ultimately sacrificing himself two decades later at anakin��s hand to save the twins from their own father, thus preserving the goodness that still existed in the skywalker bloodline (unbeknownst to anakin). and if that isn’t the greatest conceivable measure of all-encompassing, selfless love for another, i don’t know what is. 

[kirlenawrites]

Anakin's pupil is scratched by a lightsaber, and he starts to see the force 👀

gift for @vandervoiz as part of the Vaderkin Creative Exchange, organised by @vaderkin-is-a-lightning-rod!

[kirlenawrites]

Title: Behind the Camera Rating: Explicit  Word count: 5k Chapter count: 1/1 Summary: The glamorous world of Hollywood hides dark secrets, and Anakin has become trapped in a web of abuse and control orchestrated by his powerful manager. His only lifeline is Obi-Wan, his bodyguard, who sees through the industry's lies to the broken person beneath.

[kirlenawrites]

What she says: I’m fine

What she means: you know what the really tragic part is? Obi Wan would have saved him, protected him and forgiven him if Anakin had just asked or said he needed help even as he lay burning