#and uses soresu

[voidartisan]

Idea that’s been living in my head for a very long time: Double role swap AU where Anakin is a senator and Obi-Wan is the leader of his home planet and Padme and Satine are Jedi

[kraviolis]

daredevil star wars au where matt and foggy and karen are all jedi but matt is constantly struggling with the fact that the jedi do a lot of good but they overlook so much suffering and pain because theyre too tied up in politics and keep failing those who need them most and he ends up becoming a dark jedi vigilante while also maintaining his cover within the order itself bcus he does still believe in the jedi code but feels that they dont do enough for the galaxy.

[americankimchi]

sw deception au where there wasn’t a convoluted council plot to have obi-wan go undercover, he actually WAS assassinated by rako hardeen due to all the enemies he’s made over the years, he bleeds out in ahsoka’s arms before anakin can get there in time/catch hardeen, and the subsequent fallout from anakin helplessly watching his master die like his mother did all those years ago

[difeisheng]

young ataru-maining padawan obi-wan facing off against maul truly means so much to me

[godblooded]

me calling a lightsaber class to ask the details: 🥺 would it.. be okay… if… 🥺 I brought my… kyle ron saber…. to use….. 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

[charmwasjess]

Strap in for the Soresu form III Obi-Wan lightsaber post. This is gonna be a sad one, girlies. We’re getting into Obi-Wan’s Fucking Trauma. 

Qui-Gon’s death changed literally everything about Obi-Wan’s life, right down to the lightsaber form. Still a Padawan himself, he had to watch as an extinct monster from his nightmares* utterly took apart the form he’d learned since he was a child, and then, to complete the destruction, slaughtered the teacher who’d taught him the form and raised him. The devastation of Qui-Gon’s actual death had to be the last in a cascading series of horrors that started with the gut-sinking realization that Qui-Gon was losing. And if all of that weren’t enough, Obi-Wan also loses his own lightsaber in the same duel, a psychological blow to his personhood which we don’t have to guess at the significance of. Obi-Wan tells us the cost of it himself in AotC: this weapon is your life. 

The Duel of the Fates on a sheer physical level is a devastating thing to consider. It’s a grueling, full out running battle, the likes of which we don’t see elsewhere in the saga. The beauty (and pounding musical score) of the fight distracts from the sheer brutality of it. Maul is physically attacking them at every turn; he manages to kick Qui-Gon hard enough to knock all 6’3 of him off his feet; he dumps Obi-Wan into a fall that seems to be several stories high. We don’t see Obi-Wan get back up off the floor with Qui-Gon’s body at the end of the duel, and I’d be surprised if he was physically able to even stand again so after the adrenaline faded and the soreness and exhaustion took over. He just been whirled in a lightsaber blender. 

I can’t imagine how hard it was for him to pick up a lightsaber again after the trauma of that battle - much less, a new, unfamiliar one, not the kyber crystal that had been his since he was a child. The new canon’s emphasis on the spiritual relationship between a Jedi and their crystal makes this detail even more excruciating. The Ataru form itself must have felt broken and unusable. How can you put your trust in a form once you watched it be broken so ruthlessly?

And this is where Obi-Wan is so endlessly beautiful as a character. He goes through this horrifying experience of violent unmaking, and instead of avoiding lightsabers as an understandable trauma response, or picking up an overwhelming power and dominance form like V, he remakes himself into a master of Soresu: a form of simple, complete defense. He doesn’t attempt to become a weapon of attack like Maul did to disintegrate Ataru; he makes himself invincible, untouchable, with a perfect defense. Soresu works the pieces that fell apart for the Jedi in the Duel of the Fates to an advantage. It is a form of ultimate endurance, of playing out your opponent and staying up in a fight until the attacker is exhausted or angry. It preserves and it lasts. It is philosophical. It is considered. It lacks the showy flash of Makashi or Ataru and returns to the basics, even working in some of that battlefield meditation that Qui-Gon so believed in. And in that simple economy, it’s gorgeous and effective. 

I have to wonder: is Soresu, on some level, a form of kinetic self-soothing for a person who faced an incredibly traumatic battle at a young age? Does Obi-Wan use it that way?

All of this is perfectly in keeping with the themes of the character. Obi-Wan’s story remains about life, about hope, about survival. The word he uses to describe the Jedi to Luke in the OT is important to me. “Jedi knights were the guardians of peace and justice.” Guardians. And what better lightsaber approach for a person who sees his role as one of protection than a form whose signature move is called “The Circle of Shelter?”

*Maul, of course, is a tragedy in his own right, but that’s a different post. 

[frostbitebakery]

LOUD.

Depa doesn’t take one look at Anakin Skywalker and wishes him to be her Padawan. She takes three.

Studying the art of Soresu has taught her many things. How to protect others, how to protect herself, how to wear someone down without being worn out in return.

While Obi-Wan had… Depa doesn’t want to call it “hop around”, but Obi-Wan had seemed rather indecisive after Attaru had turned out to be not the right choice.

Depa’s first and only choice had been Soresu. While Mace had shed a theatrical tear that she wouldn’t follow in his footsteps, she’d been enamored with the philosophy of the form.

Her first look at Anakin had been upside down.

She’d come across Obi-Wan showing Anakin the Temple when she’d seen him sign “a change in perspective can reveal what is right in front of us”. The context hadn’t mattered much, just that Obi-Wan had hugged the boy around his middle and the next thing Anakin was upside down and pointing excitedly.

“Oh there it is!”

She hadn’t thought much of it until Obi-Wan had shown up at her doorstep.

He had felt some darkness in the child. His erstwhile Master was murdered by a Sith. He had murdered the Sith.

“Everything is rather tumultuous,” he had signed to her raised brow.

Anakin needed a stabilizing presence here and all of Obi-Wan’s friends were either crazy or up to their necks in trial prep.

“I’m flattered, Padawan Kenobi,” she had replied, “let’s spar.”

Sparring was, in the end, more moving meditation but she felt his mind slowing its frantic pace, the events of the past weeks shifting into understanding.

They’d sat in silence for a long time. His cheek ended up on her shoulder and she dropped her chin on his head.

“Sleep, Master Kenobi,” she’d said softly. Much had been revealed during their meditation after all.

He had tapped a thank you on her arm.

Depa had taken her second look at Anakin after that.

A handful of a boy and she felt overwhelmed just by being near him. Only a Master’s Master would be able to train him when the time came.

Though she enjoyed his presence. Soaking up knowledge like a sponge, being deeply engrossed in tinkering with parts. The Force so close to the surface, like a maelstrom, but calming when Anakin had been given the right tools.

So bright the dark was almost unnoticeable. But Depa noticed. Wanted to help the boy overcome the darkness.

Depa had taken a third look at Anakin a few years after Obi-Wan had first brought him to the Temple, and she had realized that her wish to help him had transformed into wishing to train him.

“Yes! I feel so ready to begin my training,” Anakin had replied to her question, face alight with excitement and the jitters he couldn’t hide. “Ga’Tran said a Master chooses their Padawan but Loni said that’s…”

“Kriffing banthashit?” Depa supplied drily and felt Anakin laugh in the Force and her heart. “Anakin?” She wanted to at least offer. She wouldn’t be mad if he declined, life would move on and she’d still be there for him. But she wanted him to know that, now, gladly, with honor, she wanted to train him.

[threebea]

So I was researching Soresu for a fic (Tarre Vizsla was totally a master of Soresu) and I finally actually took in why it's the way of the mynock

It's an endurance based form that lets you continue on for a long time using momentum, which is why Obi-Wan constantly does flourishes he isn't actually showing off, he's actually building momentum so that he gains more power with less energy. Probably doesn't work like that in real life, I don't know about swords, but that's the explanation.

Anyway what Soresu does is gain momentum and sap your opponents endurance like a mynock saps power from ships and I really love that someone thought about all this .

[starpeace]

the lightsaber forms, a super condensed summary

form i shii-cho: this is the basics that they teach to kids, every jedi knows this stuff

form ii makashi: elegant efficient fencing-inspired duelling form. count dooku’s the star student

form iii soresu: defensive style where you’re just trying to stay alive and wear out your opponent until they start making mistakes. think obi-wan

form iv ataru: using the force to do a bunch of acrobatics, because a backflip can liven up any boring duel. remember when yoda was boucing around the senate

form v djem so/shien: overpowering strength, and also deflecting your enemy’s attacks straight back at them. popular with skywalkers

form vi niman: very pathetic. a form for if you just need a passing grade in lightsaber combat and you’d rather do something else. i’m not joking, every niman practitioner at the battle of geonosis died. all of them. look it up

form vii juyo/vaapad: channelling your inner darkness. it’s basically a sith technique so you’re dancing on the edge of the dark side here, but if you’re really fucking cool (aka mace windu) you can use it with enough focus and control to stay light

[other-peoples-coats]

hey, in a universe where the clone wars didn't end in the order being wiped out (idk palpatine dies of Being Old Disease/chokes on a space fish bone/gets crushed in a tragic senate pod accident, the war grinds to a halt bc turns out doing war is much harder when you're not cheating off your enemy's notes, etc etc), you think the popularity of various lightsaber styles changes radically?

like wookipedia reckons Niman was Super Popular pre-war, but also that it was.....not great for actual war......so. Do you have a lot more soresu/djem so/shii-cho users, because they're the jedi who, uh, actually survived the war, and then they pass that on to their padawans?

was there more emphasis, as the war wore on, that...look, tiny baby initates, you need to pick a form that means you won't immediately get killed in open combat, ataru is right out because you will not have the endurance to keep up through a battle for five+ years, you're doing shien and you will like it, which means you have a whole generation of jedi who picked their Main Form less because it called to them and more because, well, it was the form that a 12 yr old thrown into pitched battle would probably not die using as soon as the blaster bolts started flying?

And that's not even considering the Jedi who saw their master/padawan/friends get cut down and swapped forms, because if they had better defense/better offense/more ability to deflect/etc, [whoever] would still be alive....

[kraviolis]

thinking abt ben dueling one of the inquisitors and having a rough time with it bcus its been ten years since he even picked up his lightsaber and he keeps struggling with his forms bcus hes so out of practice so he ends up using a mix of ataru, soresu, and djem so and he gets called the fuck out for it from the inquisitor

[xxlittle0birdxx]

In an alternate universe/timeline where Obi-wan leaves the Jedi to stay with Satine…

Pre Vizsla plots to assassinate Satine. No frills, no fuss, just him and the Darksaber. Bo-Katan may or may not have tipped off Satine and Obi-wan. She disagrees with everything Satine does — she married Jedi scum for stars’ sake — but Satine is still her sister.

Imagine Pre’s surprise when he’s met by one irate Obi-wan Kryze-Kenobi, lightsaber in hand. If Pre wants to get at Satine, he’ll have to get through Obi-wan. Oh? Those parcels that arrive with some regularity from Qui-gon? They might have holocrons with lightsaber forms. Obi-wan will admit to Satine that he’s been studying Soresu. For defense. He doesn’t tell her about the lessons in Ataru. And he doesn’t hesitate to use its aggressive style with Pre. This is personal. It isn’t just about preserving Satine’s dream of a peaceful Mandalore. It’s his family. It’s his wife, his children, and damn it, even Bo, even though she drives him bonkers.

The fight ends when Obi-wan physically rips the Darksaber from Pre’s hand, and does that twirly thing with the hilt. It’s a little hello there from a Force user to the ancient kyber crystal inside. The Darksaber settles into Obi-wan’s grip. The more he swings it, the more it feels like an extension of his body.

He wipes the floor with Pre, leaving him in a demoralized heap, unaware of the significance of the moment. To the doubters among them, Obi-wan just became a true Mandalorian. Obi-wan is bemused by the way people treat him now. They were respectful before, but now they’re downright deferential. Bo explains what the Darksaber means and laughs so hard at the look of dismay on Obi-wan’s face that she shoots caf from her nose.

Moral of the story? Duchess Satine’s consort might look and sound like a nerdy university professor, who spends his days touring hospitals and schools on behalf of the Duchess of Mandalore, but try to fuck with her, and risk facing the wrath of the Mand’alor.

[daisychainsandbowties]

Is it just me or does shin hati lacks personality?

i think it’s pretty obvious i don’t think of Shin as lacking in personality. i love what i’ve seen of her so far - think Ivanna is absolutely killing it with her performance so far, playing this mixture of intensity and homegrown Jedi calm, of a girl who is very alone and also trying to hold herself away from caring about anyone she might have to kill. i mean, i don’t know why you think she has no personality (i’d be interested in hearing your reasons) but to me she’s a fantastic character. if you know me you know that it takes A LOT for me to write fic for a character or a ship. so if wolfwren has moved me, i can pretty much guarantee i don’t sell out for looks with no personality.

but let me actually explain why i like Shin

firstly, she’s had very little screen time, to the extent i’ve probably got gifs of every frame of her so far on my blog. meanwhile Sabine has all of Rebels, Ahsoka has The Clone Wars, and Huyang is, frankly, a very typical example of a speaking droid. reminds me of c3po (i think he’s great, just not original characterisation). and they’ve all had more screen time in these four eps than Shin, who nonetheless has, in my opinion, demonstrated tremendous presence in every single scene she’s appeared in.

how she shows up on Lothal, stands there and says in her maddeningly calm tone, “we’ve been looking for this.” it’s just… so tongue-in-cheek, and Shin could so easily have sic’d the droid on Sabine and made her escape, could have smacked her against a wall with the Force and strolled away. but she chooses to stay. and the way she dances around Sabine’s blows… grabs the hilt of her saber to manipulate her in the fight, putty in her hands. flips her over her shoulder and plays plays plays with her… the grace and the wildness and the strange fascination of their fight. god she’s just!! so intriguing.

i think people pay too little attention to how much characterisation there is in a fight scene. we have Sabine fighting with a style that’s very much a mesh of form 1 and form 3. it’s defensive, it has hints of Ahsoka in it, her own modified and slightly more useful variation of Soresu (form 3) and then we have Shin. i need to examine her moves more closely to tell what forms (i think definitely forms plural) she’s drawing from - not much makashi, which makes sense since Baylan is Jedi-trained. her movements remind me of Maul’s style in The Phantom Menace, but there’s an element to her style that feels more… joyful, freeform, free verse.

she spins and pirouettes and barely avoids the cut of Sabine’s lightsaber. there’s relish in those movements. she can clearly block blaster bolts magnificently, has the athletic and acrobatic ability for ataru (the form yoda favours, and anakin to an extent). she’s a muddle of contradictions. silent so often but when she fights, when she flies that fighter…she’s golden.

and wry, too. watch for those slight smiles. the “you almost got them” and her hop-skip in the forest on Seatos, the “hello there” energy reminding me so much of Obi-Wan. and then her obvious terror when the Inquisitor falls, spewing green smoke. at the time i thought she was afraid for herself, of Ahsoka, but she was really afraid for Baylan. he’s trying to be a Jedi Master to her - there’s distance in their relationship, and GOD you can see her longing for contact, for touch, for something she can push and feel pushing back.

i think it’s why she antagonizes Morgan, why she waits to duel Sabine. she wants to… touch something and not just in a physical sense but in terms of connection. the light is so much about embracing life and i think of Shin trapped in the middle of that, not good or evil, light or dark, but caught in a terrible silence. her care and her fire is contained but it burns. especially when she fights, when she loses her temper “you have no power”, choking Sabine at the end, and that’s just the fire that creeps out under the door! beware the smoke.

the moments of fear, of guarded concern, of delight and fascination, anger and joy. i mean!! she’s a girl of few words, but when she speaks she SPEAKS. and when she doesn’t you can see so much going on in her body language, her face, her eyes, her actions. i think both of her fight scenes are beautiful examples of character through conflict.

i always use duels and fights for character-building. a fight is boring with nothing behind it - and with Shin we see, at first, fascination. wanting to prove herself, to show she’s the better padawan, but she also… i think she could have killed Sabine very easily. i would have run from Ahsoka too, but she honestly could have murdered Sabine right there. i love how they’re creating this sense that Shin is both… disturbed and intrigued by Sabine in episode 4. angry and also… holding her by the wrist, standing between her and Morgan.

listen, i am going to ship wolfwren whether or not my cows come home, but i really don’t bother with characters who aren’t interesting. so, yeah, i think Shin has plenty of personality! i love what star wars has been doing with the girls who have red(ish) sabers lately. i adore Reva, i am regularly insane about Trilla Suduri, and i think Shin is very different from them but no less fascinating! i’m loving the tentative line she’s walking between dangerous and vulnerable.

and, yeah, i think they should kiss.

[dathomirdumpsterfire]

are you perhaps willing to give a tiny snippet of the desert husbands whip 🥺

a snippet! a snappet! a small snitch of s'maul??

as you wish!

-dilf season 2 ch 37-

Obi-Wan runs a hand back through his hair to neaten the strands a bit, some sixth sense telling him the humidity is playing havoc with it. "If you must know, I was there as a slave. The order had decided I was… best placed as part of the agricorps. Except I was kidnapped from my post, and put in chains. It took time, but I eventually staged a revolt."

Maul chokes on air. "You mean to tell me- the jedi order nearly sent-" he stops to cough a laugh, "-the greatest soresu master they had seen in an age, to be a farmer? A ploughman?"

"It's a… noble career. Feeding people is important," he tries, but it sounds unconvincing even to his own ears. He had been devastated to be relegated to agriculture instead of knighthood. Not that it wasn't a powerful calling… but it wasn't his.

Maul loses it, wheezing quietly with mirth, his force presence flaring obnoxiously.

Obi-Wan sighs, expansively. "It's not that funny."

"Farmer! They would have made you a farmer!" the man crows.

He glowers. "If you're quite done, we could maybe focus on the test…"

"Oh, cursed line of Aith'zin, that is truly the most hilarious thing I have ever heard. Obi-Wan Kenobi, expert in- in radishes and soil amendments." He hears a slap, like the sith had struck a palm to his metal thigh. "I am even more grateful the jedi did not come for me! Can you imagine what mundanity they would have subjected me to? School teacher, hmmm? Secretary? Potter?"

At this rate, Obi-Wan is sure he will run out of sighs before they reach the end of this place. A lifetime supply used up in an afternoon.

"Oh, no, I know!" The sith smacks him on the shoulder, "A mechanic! I could have spent my sad little life as a jedi puppet repairing watering drones right alongside you in the agricorps."

Obi-Wan thinks about that for only a minute, and immediately resolves never to think about it again.

Him, Maul, quiet days, and the steady growth of crops? If the worst he had ever done in life was to be mediocre at growing things and argue all the time with his mechanic…?

...it would have been so much better than the fruition of reality.

"You never know," he says without tone, "It could have been a fulfilling life."

The sith makes a noise like a dying space whale.

Obi-Wan glares. "You sound like a demented purgill, I hope you know… I- wait, how did you know where my shoulder was? It's pitch black in here. I'm surprised you didn't smack me in the head."

"Oh see, there is this thing called the living force," Maul begins, snide, "and through it all living things are connected."

"I hate you," he replies mildly.

"Good," the man purrs.

[charmwasjess]

If there’s a legit good reason why Qui-Gon chose to specialize in form IV, Ataru, the Hawkbat lightsaber form, aside from the simple, likely fact that he did it to troll his old Master Dooku (who outright calls the acrobatics of the form “ridiculous,”) I’d like to hear it. By which I mean I’ll write you a post about it.

Ataru is fast, aggressive, and inclined to treat the battlefield as a 3D space where the air is just as comfortable a place to be as on your own two feet. A direct response to Soresu, the “defense is my attack” form, Ataru flips that into “attack is my defense.” (We won’t talk about Makashi’s contribution to the conversation: “no defense whatsoever, but think fast, I just threw a dinner fork at you so hard it stuck in your metal arm!”) 

Of course, the most recognizable and classic application of Ataru is Yoda’s; we see him whizzing around people’s heads like a little green hummingbird in his AotC and RotS duels. Qui-Gon’s version looks nothing like that. If we weren’t told, I think it would be hard to guess that those characters are using the same form. In Duel of the Fates, Qui-Gon has to move down or over those infamous walkways repeatedly. He just jumps them: no flips, no aerial maneuvers, no bouncing off the walls. And this isn’t simply a practical choice for his age and build: Jocasta Nu is running up walls and leaping out of skyscrapers at easily aged 40 years older than Qui-Gon, and for all Dooku’s bitching over Ataru acrobatics, he does more flips to simply avoid walking down a few stairs than Qui-Gon, Master of the flip form, does in his entire time on screen. 

And yet, on some level, all of that makes perfect sense for Qui-Gon. Who better to completely subvert a form? This is a character who is contrary as fuck, full of wonderful contradiction, who blends lightsaber theory centered on attack and aggression with literal meditation. While the most notable scene, actually kneeling in the pose and everything, is in TPM, he does battle meditation repeatedly on a mental level in the Master and Apprentice and Padawan novels. (And it rightfully freaks out Obi-Wan.) Qui-Gon takes Ataru’s “your whole body is a weapon” and doesn’t apply that to somersaults, but rather, to moves like punching Darth Maul off a balcony as we see him do in Duel of the Fates. He fights in a way that throws himself bodily up against obstacles. You can see the same physicality of his relationship with his weapon in the scene where he is simply burning through the blast doors in TPM. We’ve seen Jedi cut through things on screen other times, but that scene is remarkable and memorable for Qui-Gon’s level of intensity. He is the battering ram. 

And we could loop back into lineage, couldn’t we? Qui-Gon stands in a line of Jedi with unconventional relationships to their lightsaber forms; their choices are formed in context of and in conversation with each other. Those backward, momentum-gaining swings from Duel of the Fates look very familiar, but who trained Qui-Gon? (And who notoriously had a problem with Ataru and might've pushed his student on some workarounds or encouraged him to cut out bits he didn't like, such as aerials?) And speaking of, is it a stretch to think that Dooku’s own casual backflips are less a considered choice and more an old habit, being himself trained by a Master who has only a theoretical relationship with gravity? 

All this to enjoy just another example of how personal the lightsaber forms can be to specific Jedi, and what wonderful fun it is to unpack the ways they use them differently because of their unique personalities and lineage.

[frostbitebakery]

Does shadow Obi-Wan use a different lightsaber form from Soresu?

He’s definitely still using Soresu.

I’m trying to get my thoughts in some semblance of order here but Soresu is just so perfectly Obi-Wan no matter what kind of AU label is slapped on him?

Soresu is defense. Which might seem weak. Defense can have the aftertaste of (almost) losing.

But defense means protecting. Being the forefront, the crossing line. A strong defense is nigh impossible to break through. And Soresu makes an art form of it so its user can defend longer than humanly possible.

It’s also leading your opponent by the nose, luring them and the calculated exhausting of them before a punctuated strike tears them down.

There’s been enough Sith to also use Soresu as their preferred form.

How Obi-Wan uses it in this verse might even seem dark to some. There might have been moments in fights where Obi-Wan exhilarated in his opponent’s realization that they weren’t the predator in this game. That the mouse turned out to be the cat.

Which led to a lot of meditation and questioning himself.