#blame palpatine

[moreespressoformydepresso]

Fox: Dear life, when I asked if my day could get any worse, it was a rhetorical question.

Fox: stares blankly at the mountain of datapads taking up every inch of his office, at the communicator ringing with 291 different people at once, then down at the emergency notification blinking up at him from his vambrace. Distantly, an explosion goes off.

Fox, sighing: Not a challenge

[supreme-leader-stoat]

Kidnapper, smugly: "As I'm sure you're aware Mr. Holmes, you need a warrant to search someone's house."

Sherlock: "You know Watson, this gentleman is correct. We really have no legal grounds to be here." pulls out a gun. "Oh, well, I suppose that makes this a robbery!" :)

[david-talks-sw]

As a quick addendum to this recent post:

Could the Jedi have done more to help Anakin? Sure. There's myriad more things that could've been done. For example, Mace could've sat Anakin down in the Council Chamber and gone "Skywalker, tell me what's really going on."

But it bears mentioning that the above scenario ⬆️ likely wouldn't yield any results. Because, well, Anakin barely ever opens up about his feelings or fears or past trauma.

He doesn't do it with Yoda, when the latter asks for more tangible information so he can tailor his advice.

He barely ever opened up to Ahsoka.

He barely did so with Obi-Wan.

And by Revenge of the Sith, he's even shutting Padmé out.

(Yes, part of it is due to the secrecy surrounding his marriage, but I've already explained my thoughts on why it's an unfounded fear at that point in time, and it's not the only factor behind his silence as he already didn't open up as far back as Phantom Menace, nor is it his only secret)

The only person he does confide in is Palpatine, who:

keeps enabling Anakin's flaws instead of letting him learn to overcome them,

keeps isolating him from everyone else.

And Palpatine's both the most powerful Sith in history and the leader of the free world, so he's always gonna find a way to worm himself into Anakin's life.

As long as Palpatine's in the picture, no matter what the Jedi or Padmé do, he'll be right around the corner, ready to undo it.

So at some point - short of Palpatine tripping into an empty elevator shaft and falling to his death - the only person who could've gotten Anakin out of that mess... was Anakin himself.

Would it have been difficult? Hell yes.

But as Shmi Skywalker (who let go of her attachment), Padmé Amidala (disciplined and principled), Obi-Wan Kenobi (refused to give in to anger upon losing the love of his life), Ezra Bridger (rejected the Emperor's promise of power and reunification with his loved ones), Luke Skywalker and Quinlan Vos (pulled back from the Dark Side against all odds) have shown us... it wouldn't have been impossible.

"All of my movies are about one thing, which is the fact that the only prison you’re in is the prison of your mind. And if you decide to open the door and get out, you can. There’s nothing stopping you." - George Lucas, SirusXM, American Voices, 2012

[brrmian]

something that so many star wars fans somehow fail to realize is that george lucas always intended for the fall of the republic to be a completely unavoidable tragedy. that’s what makes it such brilliant storytelling.

placing the blame on just one party in the galaxy-wide farce that was the clone wars just isn’t interpreting the story the way its writer intended. neither is saying that all players should be held equally accountable. i don’t think the jedi were at fault for the state of the republic, and (despite the fact that he did horrible things) neither was anakin, on a galactic or governmental scale.

the real villain is palpatine, who shaped the government into a corrupt system by his own hand. the blame for turning a democratic republic into an authoritarian dictatorship (which it was long before it became the empire) under the noses of thousands of incredibly corrupt politicians must be placed entirely on him, and him alone.

by the end of the war, the jedi council recognized that they had already lost the ability to hold onto what it truly means to be a jedi. in their prime during the days of the old republic, the jedi knights were “the guardians of peace and justice.” they’re meant to as diplomats, peacekeepers, mediators, and public servants. when the clone wars began, they were essentially forced into being soldiers, generals, and quasi-politicians by palpatine and the senate. all of those things are antithetical to the jedi’s beliefs, but they had no other choice.

placing even the smallest bit of blame on the jedi for anything leading to the republic’s downfall—and their own—is not only unfair, it’s factually incorrect. the jedi order is a monastic organization. they have no say in the senate and no voting power. saying they’re corrupt, when in fact they were just as conned by palpatine as the rest of the galaxy, is victim-blaming and scapegoating.

palpatine shoved the jedi face first into fighting the war, and pretty much threw the clone army into their laps on top of that. the jedi had no say in the matter, and they certainly had no say in the war itself being started, either. because he controlled both sides, palpatine was able to make the CIS and the republic declare war on each other even though its citizens wanted the same outcome: political independence and survival. if not for palpatine’s schemes, the separatists would have been allowed to secede peacefully, the republic would have continued existing, and the war would have been completely avoided. but that was unfortunately not the case.

so in a galaxy thrown into an unavoidable war by its own secret dictator, with an army of sentient slaves suddenly at their command, and the risk of billions of deaths at the hands of the droid army imminently approaching, what do the galaxy’s official peacekeepers have no other choice but to do? be peacekeepers. why wouldn’t the sworn defenders of the galaxy be out on the battlefields trying to end the war? if they sat in the temple and did nothing, they simply wouldn’t be jedi.

the jedi were forced into a lose/lose situation. every religion and organization has faults, but that doesn’t place any blame on them for the catch-22 they were trapped into falling for. when the clone wars started—and the key point here is that it never should have in the first place—the jedi still needed to be jedi. unfortunately for them, that meant having positions of power not meant for them being thrust upon their shoulders. they couldn’t drop the burden, because that meant actively choosing not to save lives—but the other option, becoming soldiers despite the tenet of their beliefs that dictates they shouldn’t, was no better.

see what a cruel trap palpatine set? it’s like a fish being caught in a fisherman’s net. the net is spread out across the ocean floor, and the fish swim above it, not knowing that the trap is waiting to be drawn in around them from below. in the end, when the net starts to tighten, dragging them closer to the surface, they can’t swim fast enough to escape from the middle to the edge—and to safety—before the net is completely tied. it’s the cruelest kind of trap: the kind that gives you just the right amount of time to think you can escape while being sprung just quick enough to make actually escaping impossible.

in the end, the order actively chose to fight the war because they needed to. there was no other way to continue on as who they were. militarizing the order was not the right choice in a vacuum, but this was not that; this was a situation in which every galaxy-changing choice was the wrong one. the jedi knew they were making a decision that drew them farther away from their beliefs, but it was the lesser of an infinite list of evils, and they didn’t see the walls closing in on them until it was too late.

lucas himself has even said that the order was not corrupt or decaying from the inside, nor did they make a series of bad choices that ultimately led to their own destruction. they were always just trying to do the right thing—but unlike literally everything else in fiction, the jedi order’s death was completely unaffected by any of the choices they made. no matter what they did, they were always going to lose. the fall of the republic wasn’t caused by its defenders choosing what they saw as the least bad choice. it didn’t come down to any decisions, political or not, that the jedi council made with the limited tools that they had. it certainly didn’t come down to one emotionally unstable twenty-three-year-old’s slow descent into insanity, either. the republic and the jedi would still have been destroyed with or without anakin’s unhinged nervous breakdown.

anakin, just like the order, the republic, and the separatists, was taken advantage of by palpatine. even if a person’s choices are their own, they don’t exist in a vacuum.

anakin would have made better choices if not for palpatine, but he didn’t. the jedi order would have kept the peace if not for palpatine, but no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t. the republic, and democracy with it, would not have crumbled if not for palpatine. not the order, not anakin, not the separatists, and not the republic.

in the end, they were all just pawns in a decades-spanning plan, one that none of them saw coming until it was too late—and by then, it was already irreversible.

[this-acuteneurosis]

In the Silence

Leia and Anakin have finally made it off Geonosis. Neither one of them is entirely sure it's worth it.

[jecki--lon]

Obi Wan Kenobi was dead.

Obi Wan Kenobi was dead, and Anakin Skywalker, now called Vader, came to in his bacta tank knowing that he had killed him.

It should have felt better.

There was gone the last chain tethering him to his lost youth, there was gone his once brother, now nemesis, there was gone the man who had left him in this half-machine state. Lord Vader had had his revenge.

Anakin Skywalker felt empty.

He had dreamed of it for years, spent two decades imagining what it would be like. It should have brought joy, elation. More even than the thundering, rapid pleasure the Sith had a taste in. Peace.

This is the man who you can blame for the death of Padmé, he tried to remind himself. The hole that was remained where Obi Wan's presence had been whispered back: you, your choice, killed her.

There was only Anakin Skywalker to take the blame. For everything.

[kenobster]

I have recently been informed that my #anti Palpatine tag has possibly been alienating the Palpatine fandom (-cries in darth vader- NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO).

Here on this blog, we love the very insidious Sheev Palpatine very much. All we ever want is for him to receive his well-earned credit for the numerous Evildoings. On this blog, we do not support people blaming the Jedi or Padme or the little blue butterflies clinging to their last flutters of life in Anakin Skywalker's meditative hellscape. We blame Palpatine himself. Partly because it's true, but mostly because we know he would not have it any other way. :)

Thus, I will no longer be using the #anti Palpatine tag and will slowly be replacing its iterations with the #blame the Palpster tag. Same message, same concept, same belief system (aka "blame the actual emotional abuser for the emotional abuse") but with a little added wink at the man as he masterfully rips the galaxy apart. :D <3

[clonehub]

blame game trains in star wars are always so funny because if there are two parties directly involved in any incident, you can blame the one whos immediate fault it is, the one(s) who had jack shit to do with the issue, you can go above everyone's heads and blame palpatine, but if you really want to get to the bottom of things you blame george lucas

[skygirlstars]

every time someone says “Anakin wouldn’t have turned to the dark side if Ahsoka hadn’t left the Order” an angel loses its wings

[weregonnabecoolbeans]

If there is a star wars what if?, then i want each episode that takes place before anakin becomes vader to end with palpatine winning anyways

[moobrvoobl-moobmoob-oobmpoobroom]

I just find it mind-boggling that some people will reblog things like “Anakin didn’t care about Rex and his men, he wouldn’t listen to Fives just because he was friends with Palpatine” and then in the next post be gushing over Rexwalker/Rexanidala like???? so you agree. Anakin does care about Rex?

[kittenfangirl20]

Does this person even get Rex, also how would Anakin allow Palpatine to mind control the Clones? It feels like no matter what happened, Palpatine would have used Order 66 to have the Clones kill the Jedi, that was the whole reason why he had them made in the first place, Anakin is not to blame for Order 66. Also funny how they leave out Luke in this post, probably because they know if they had Luke complaining about how Anakin/Vader treated him then people would point out that Luke was out of character because he had faith in his father. Same goes for Padmé, but I feel like they did that more because they think that Padmé wouldn’t complain about her husband because they think she has a fascist kink which is a creepy way to look at Padmé.

[arianeemorythethird]

actually you know what, while I still stand firmly behind "the real villain of rex's tcw-era gothic horror story is rex with a control chip in his head" I think there's another option I'm ignoring here...

in classic gothic horror, of course, a hero has two main ways to resolve the problem of the monster:

✅defeat the monster

✅become the monster

and in canon, rex - being the overachiever that he is - gets to do both!

but gothic romance introduces a third, exciting option:

✅marry the monster

and I think rexwalker is definitely at its sexiest when it involves an anakin who is anywhere on the path from rots-era anguished doubt, to full-on commitment as darth vader, turning all his immense capacity for love and his ride-or-die, damn-the-consequences loyalty towards one ordinary (brave, determined, genuinely good) clone

[kefirstushyu]

I have a lot of WINGS!AU content but I gotta wait for @valeforess to officially post the infos :]

Anakin's info-post is not out yet, so lemme be your spoiler-bringer today

• His wings are clipped at their ends since his childhood as a slave, so he can't fly properly (but he really wants to💀💀)

• Palpatine is a praying mantis in this AU, so he can't fly well either, BUT he can at least float down??? Parachute-like??

Yeah, basically I was wondering how would they try not to fall WHILE FALLING (yeah I know Jedi can do the soft-landing thing, but uhh??)

[firefly-fez]

could anyone else just feel their blood boil at palpatine saying “if the clones will just blindly follow orders” as his excuse to decommission them when we all know damn well that’s exactly what he created them for. that’s what he made them do, blindly follow orders. that’s the only thing he ever needed them or wanted them to do. blindly follow orders: eliminate the jedi threat by being brainwashed to kill their best friends, to blindly. follow. orders. he never wanted them to serve the republic, or the jedi, he wanted them to accrue enough military tactical experience so they would have all the intelligence they needed when the time came. he never wanted them to serve the jedi, he wanted them to kill the jedi. he told them they were born to be loyal to the republic and groomed them to destroy it. and that job is now done so he casts them aside using the earliest available excuse that they are an inferior class of soldiers because they will blindly follow orders.

[inafieldofstarflowers]

When you’re writing a fic and a fic series and you should work on them but an idea for another fic comes to mind and you have to plot it out while it’s present in your mind, and then it becomes bigger than you meant and it is 2am and you’re not done with that and you also still haven’t finished the chapters you meant to write to update your actual WIPs