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I think that generally accepted fan headcanon that Leia would wish OW was her dad over Anakin or not understanding why Padmé fell for him instead of OW is unfunny and baseless. Mostly coping mechanisms for people who hate Anakin or severely project themselves inside or project something inside OW.

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99.9% of Anakin Skywalker's problems are solved if he just has parents with him send post

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…but she treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart

quick doodle of mommy and her babykin

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Anakin Skywalker vs Jedi identity

I have seen many takes I consider bad about Anakin because they are based more on a narrative trope than about the character in the movies but recently I found another one I thought was interesting to analyse.

This idea that Anakin would have forgotten all about the well being of others if he choose to marry Padme and leave with her resigning to his place in the Jedi Order.

This take presumes just because Anakin(and Padme) wish to have a family, make their relationship official and raise their children on their own home instead of sending them to the Jedi order, a perfectly normal and fair aspiration by all measures considering their actual work dedicated to the Jedi Order and the Republic absorbed their childhood, this somehow means Anakin no longer cared about other people because he left the Jedi and the Jedi are involved while he is selfish and only wanted to be a Jedi for fame and the cool lightsaber, an understable take if you are looking at him as a jock trope but that is not the character from the movies, novels, comics or TCW.

For Anakin, the character in the movies, being a Jedi was secondary to freeing the slaves on Tatooine, it was secondary to freeing his mother, secondary to seeking peace in the galaxy, secondary to helping the clones, while at the same time, he had a big amount of respect towards the Jedi beliefs, so much that he bassically memorized their philosophy, he is actually the only main character other than Yoda who talks about Jedi philosophy in PT outside of the context of duty to the Republic and he uses those arguments to defend the Jedi Order from Palpatine´s criticisms , in fact in TPM , in his child mind, being a Jedi was his means towards achieving this ideal of freedom in the outer rim, for Anakin being a Jedi was never an end on itself, it was a means towards making lasting changes.

"I had a dream, I was a Jedi, I came back here and freed all the slaves" - Anakin Skywalker

It´s interesting for me because if anything Anakin´s problem when it comes to other people is that he cares so much that the Jedi often had to convince him to leave them behind, be it his Mom, Padme, clone troopers, his padawan, etc. His issue with the Jedi Order wasnt their involvement in helping others, that´s what he admired of them, his issue was their detachment often meant him abandoning family or leaving behind people who needed help because of this ideal of a higher duty, the many over the few or the one.

For example, that time he disobeyed orders to go investigate an objective for the republic army and discovered their information was incomplete and they were about to bomb civilians that had been made slaves by the separatists so he went to rescue them before doing their attack.

This personal characteristic of Anakin would not have changed if he left the Jedi Order to live with Padme, he still would have this urge to do anything in his power to help, because that´s simply who he is as a person since he was a young child, he wants to help, he likes to help, this is why he helped Padme get to her planet, that´s who he is and as much as he respects the Jedi, he can still help even if he left the Order.

I believe Yoda was right when he rejected Anakin from the Jedi Order at the start of TPM, not because Anakin didn´t have Jedi aptitudes, he already had a lot of them but those were not developed in the context of the Jedi Order, with a Jedi teacher, he learned them from his mother, from seeing the injustice on Tatooine, from wanting to do something about it. Anakin was already too involved with the world outside the Jedi Order as a child for him to adapt to the ways of the Jedi Order or to be content just following the Jedi Code for the rest of his life and this conflict between duty to the Order, to his family, to his friends was exploited by Palpatine.

So in a world in which Anakin married Padme and went to live with her, I don´t believe he would have cared much about losing his Jedi status, because that always had been secondary to his main ideals, which were to make a difference in the galaxy he lived and he would have seek to make that difference married to Padme or not.

This is also why I don´t see him at all as a stay at home Dad/Husband, the moment he was free to explore his own projects he definitely would have tried to make his childhood dream a reality and he definitely would have done so with Padme´s support and whoever wanted to join, he was a child slave who managed to help a Queen and a Jedi with his talents and good will alone, that´s who he is and that didn´t change.

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dgmw I love obi wan kenobi but it's so insane to me how people will act like he suffered the MOST out of any star wars character. as if Anakin "born into chattel slavery and only freed by space cops who essentially abducted him and forced him to abandon his mother and then later punished him for trying to save her" Skywalker is not literally his padawan. it makes me feel insane how little Anakin's origins as a slave born into chattel slavery is acknowledged by the fandom or even by the current Star Wars storytelling. AND I would go so far as to say that this dismissal of Anakin's slave trauma is related to how society at large is conditioned not to take slavery seriously because of anti-Black racism and a systemic desire by colonial governments to frame slavery as something that has no lasting effect and as something firmly in the past or happening elsewhere. Like, Anakin's whole personhood was taken from him violently and systemically by slavery, then by the jedi, then by the sith. and youse wanna tell me that fucking obi wan or that little middle class incel kylo have suffered anything remotely close? please.

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I agree there is something really baffling about certain parts of SW fandom's obsession with the Jedi ORDER, specifically. It's a religious institution, ffs. It's a militarised monastic order, much like others in history, such as the Knights Templar, who likewise had quite the memorable 'fall' (which served as an inspiration for Order 66). Even just at a surface level, you can still separate the individual Jedi characters from this. You can even separate the Jedi religion (or at least its more esoteric/spiritual teachings) from the Order, if you want. The Force (and the Light side of the Force) is something that exists with or without a religious institution. It's common in the history of our own world for such insitutions to fail and dissolve, and yet the religion manages to survive, just without that particulate organisation. And sometimes these religions evolve, shedding outdated laws or other teachings that are no longer relevant to daily life. (See: Love and family saving the day, despite not being permitted to Jedi by the Old Order. The implication being that this rule is no longer relevant to Jedi life, as proven by the outcome of the PT x OT Skywalker saga.)

So, it's a little strange that SW fans can be so staunch in idealising the Old Jedi Order even in the face of its many long-established flaws. It often seems like they can't distinguish between the Old Jedi Order of the Prequels era and the more general Jedi religion that likely existed long before the Order was founded. Or between the Old Order and the Light Side of the Force. (To me, it's like if people were constantly equating the Knights Templar with the entirety of Judeo-Christian history and with the concept of 'Divinity' itself.) Perrsonally, I am not a Jedi-hater, and I am fine with the Jedi religion continuing in the SW universe. It's how I interpret the ending of Luke's arc in RotJ, that he's re-established the Jedi, just in a new and improved form. A version of the Jedi where the precise manner of Anakin's fall could NEVER happen again, because Jedi will not ever be denied love and family in the New Order. However, I am a huge critic of the OLD Jedi Order. Their servitude to a corrupt Senate was simply not sustainable, and many of their teachings and practices seem to have become dogmatic. They no longer truly served 'the Will of the Force', but rather the will of a corrupt government. I believe strongly they were doomed to fall eventually even without Anakin Skywalker's presence. Their time had come. It just didn't necessarily have to be so violent and horrible, but something had to change.

Why this is so difficult for some to grasp is beyond me. The only way anyone can presume 'the Jedi' are flawless white knights is if they take Obi-Wan's description of them in A New Hope at face value. Obi-Wan, the completely biased fellow who likes to speak in half-truths and hyperbole. I mean... ha! The 'cynical reveal' in the Prequels that the Jedi were actually quite flawed by that point in their history was one of the BEST things about the Prequels films. It made the PT x OT saga even better and more meaningful. People seem to forget that the main characters of Lucas' Star Wars are the Skywalker family, NOT 'the Jedi'. And the Jedi Order being flawed makes the SKYWALKER's story even more compelling. Maybe some SW fans are stuck in the mentality of idealisation due to being into the EU books prior to the release of the Prequels? Idk. It still doesn't explain the reason why some of the younger Disney-era SW fans seem to think this way, though..

every time i post abt the jedi a bit too much my for you tab gets flooded with awesome jedi apologist posts arguing things like “child soldiers are okay if the children have superpowers” and “anakin wanting his wife to be alive was possessive and selfish”

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I’m someone who generally likes the Jedi, but I am intensely weirded out by other fans of the Jedi finding ways to excuse every bad decision by the Jedi Council and find ways to argue that they have no agency ever, so that nothing can be their fault. And meanwhile, they’ll use 9yo Anakin’s “I’m not afraid” lie as proof that he was never suited to be a Jedi because he didn’t know what to say to a room full of strangers when freshly freed from slavery. (And Anakin wasn’t even rejected for lying? They just thought he was too old.) It’s very noticeable and kind of uncomfortable how fans will rush to excuse a group of 12 adults vs. find fault with one child and use his trauma as proof he was irredeemable from Day 1.

waiting for the day when people realize that being rabidly Jedi Good is equally as wild as being rabidly Jedi Bad. why does your brain seemingly shatter into a thousand pieces at the concept of something with the very mild nuance that star wars has? like if you can't look at a situation without either excusing an entity entirely of blame or condemning them completely can that be a thing you reckon with privately and not in my notes section? be weird on your own post mine are already long enough

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I’ve never felt the need to ‘justify’ why I ship Anidala — the entirety of the Prequels and the Original Trilogy is the justification (or, rather, vindication!) of their relationship, and anyone who can’t see that that is missing the point of Lucas’ Skywalker saga.

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"On Naboo. What's it like?"

Padmé could hardly even register the question, [ ... ] "Oh, it's very... very green. You know, with lots of water, and trees and plants everywhere. It's not like here at all."

— Attack of the Clones novel, R.A Salvatore.

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i actually have one more thing to say. love saved anakin. love literally saved anakin. the love anakin skywalker had for his wife and subsequently their children, the love luke had for his father, is what saved anakin. it’s what destroyed the dark side. star wars is very much a love story. thanks. 

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PADME AMIDALA costume appreciation: ▶ Revenge of the Sith [3/9] (costume design by Trisha Biggar)

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I’ve been getting some notes on old SW posts, and now I’m thinking of how—

Well, I have zero patience for the whole “Owen and Beru were Luke’s real parents, not Anakin and Padmé” thing, since I think it ignores Luke’s own (very, very obvious) feelings on the matter. Like, if you manage to come away from the OT thinking that Luke doesn’t regard Anakin as his father, I … uh, wow. 

Anyway, I think it’s pretty likely, in-story, that Luke was raised to see Anakin as his father by Owen and Beru themselves. They brought him up. They kept his name as Skywalker. They keep referring to Anakin as his father. Luke’s sense of his relationship to his parents didn’t arise out of nothing.

That said, Owen and Beru have no particular reason to go out of their way to preserve Anakin’s legacy or whatever. They barely knew him. Their connection to him is quite possibly dangerous after the Order falls. Yet they maintain it in how they bring up Luke. Why?

I can think of a couple of reasons, esp if they believe Anakin is dead. They might not have wanted a child of their own, anyway. They might think it’s wrong to take the baby of two people who just got murdered and erase them from their child’s psyche. But (again, speaking in-story), it may also be something else.

They didn’t know Anakin. But they did know his mother.

Owen awkwardly tells Anakin that they’re stepbrothers because of Shmi. They grieve over Shmi with Anakin. Then a few years pass and he’s dead, apparently, and all that’s left is this baby. It’s clearly a sentimental moment for them. And maybe that’s less because BABY, and more because there’s something left of Shmi in their lives now, through Anakin. If that’s the case, then it might be very important to them to make sure, as far as they can, that Luke has a sense of his tie to Anakin—and through him, to Shmi.

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“everyone interprets characters differently” unfortunately so true! thankfully I was blessed with an intense preternatural insight into their core beings (watched and paid attention) and I don’t have to worry

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“ memory is punishment ”

from the series: moments when i like to believe that vader was haunted by the memory of padmé, when leia admitted that she loved han with the same sadness as padmé.

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Expanded on an old Vader sketch of mine with some color experimentation.

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