This Came In Response To Seeing Some Blog Post On My Dash About The Jedi And Republic. I'm Usually Cool

this came in response to seeing some blog post on my dash about the jedi and republic. i'm usually cool with the jedi, but this post set me off because of the way it defended the Republic.

i understand being jedi positive and jedi critical. i will side eye you immensely and run screaming if you are empire positive beyond the whole 'cool aesthetic and badass villains' and empire crits should and are the norm. i even get being new republic positive-while they suck, they are way better than the neo-nazis.

what i don't understand is, especially in the context of the prequels, is being republic-positive. like, the republic is not this holy paragon symbiotic relationship with the jedi that flourished harmoniously without the evil Sith. like, it's canon that the republic has been failing and a problem since like, before baby palpatine existed. the jedi behold themselves to the republic out of tradition, not for the republic itself. the republic is george lucas's hamfisted take on fucking american imperialism. are you seriously trying to defend this? you really want to look at me and tell me that everything was fine with Bush Era Politics? really?

Excerpt from The Jedi: Then and Now in Popular Culture and Media

With the advent of the Clone Wars, the Jedi began to play a different role within the galactic cultural lexicon. No more were they exotic and far-off monks you might bump into once in a lifetime in an event you’d recount at family reunions – now they were on the frontlines, physically and metaphorically. Holonews broadcasts delved their personalities and characteristics much like a youngling would their action hero toys. Of particular note here are the Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, who were at the forefront of the galaxy’s collective attention.[1] The phrase Kenobi and Skywalker almost became a single word, always mentioned in the same hurried breath by newscasters. Both these Jedi were as much celebrities as they were soldiers, something frowned on by the more conservative members of galactic society. Although Kenobi and Skywalker never encouraged the attention[2], several Senators like Adraivl Bhogt frequently commented on the phenomenon of warrior celebrities, cautioning the public against canonizing Generals.

Kenobi and Skywalker represent an interesting epoch in galactic history. For years, they dominated the news cycle, only to then disappear completely for decades. Skywalker especially is elusive. Virtually all information about Skywalker has been scrubbed from across libraries, archives, and the holonet – although many of the more long-lived species can recall the news broadcasts and even pull out a fan-made poster, collecting academic sources is difficult to the point of being impossible. With the rise of the Empire and the events of Order 66, digging into the Jedi was a dangerous if not fatal proposal, leading to a paradoxical living memory of the Order. Everyone remembered the Jedi, but no one could talk about them. In the course of galactic affairs, they became the bantha in the room, a shadow in every conversation that could never materialize fully. Articles during the Empire provide a fascinating historical record, as journalists essentially had to mention the Jedi without mentioning them. Providing some historical context from the Clone Wars in an article becomes a delicate balancing act when presenting the Jedi in a positive light is anathema, but everyone you interviewed remembers how the Jedi saved the day. Consequently, most of the articles from this time period have an obvious Jedi-shaped hole.

Skywalker epitomizes this. Everyone in the galaxy had heard of the Hero with No Fear, until they hadn’t. Although most of the public assumed that Skywalker died with Kenobi at the end of Order 66[3], little evidence of his fate exists.[4] Anakin Skywalker was one of the most famous men in the galaxy at the end of the Clone Wars. Subjects interviewed for this book remember him as a dashing war hero with a brazen optimism, an image deliberately cultivated by the media for views as a poster boy for the war effort.[5] Despite his fame, Skywalker seemed to be an intensely private person. Even during the Clone Wars, few interviews of him existed, and even fewer personal records.[6] The scarcity of information about him led to a Holonet obsession, with every new picture spawning viral online jokes and commentary.[7] The only subject more discussed than Skywalker was Skywalker and Kenobi.[8] While Skywalker was a celebrity, Skywalker and Kenobi (as a single word) was a political tool.[9] This dichotomy is made evident by political cartoons of the time. In one of the most controversial, Skywalker and Kenobi are depicted as two towering pillars holding up a putrid dump that has a sign  proclaiming the Republic. To use a common talk show line from the time – the Senate debated them; the holonet sainted them; the Separatists hated them. Corny and devoid of wit, but true.

Other evidence of the public perception of the Jedi can be found in the holovision shows. Many of these shows now only have bootleg copies available and have become collector’s items, so finding one is like winning the lottery, historically and financially speaking. Last year, one show about Kenobi from the Clone Wars titled Kenobi: Life and Times of the Galactic Hottie that reenacted biographical events sold for four million credits to an unknown buyer. It is interesting to note that Kenobi featured more often in fictionalized versions than Skywalker. One catalog discovered by a researcher on Bandomeer demonstrated that Kenobi shows outnumbered Skywalker’s two to one. Theories for this abound; Kenobi was more popular than Skywalker (false), Kenobi was more generically appealing (possibly), or that Kenobi was less trigger happy (true). This author theorizes that the proliferation of Kenobi media vs. Skywalker was intentionally pushed by Skywalker. Three separate interviewees recall Skywalker publicly commenting that he enjoyed Kenobi films, and one alleged that Skywalker was once photographed wearing a shirt from the Kenobi: Galactic Hottie holovision show. Given that Skywalker’s attention was the best free advertising possible, a healthy incentive for focusing on Kenobi rather than Skywalker existed. Kenobi’s thoughts on this are unknown.

In recent years, a growing effort has been made to find beings who were close to Kenobi and Skywalker and ask them for more information about the two. This effort has lost steam, however, on the basis of having no beings to ask. Most of the clones died in the years after the Order 66. Being connected to Kenobi and Skywalker was not a good place to be, in historical hindsight. Some of the more dramatic academic work on the two has characterized friendship with them as a death knell.[10]

In the end, more questions than answers remain. Was Skywalker Vader? If so, did Vader ever find Kenobi? Where was Kenobi during the rise of the Empire? Who was the mother of the Skywalker twins?  If Skywalker was Vader, what happened in the days between the rescue of Coruscant and Order 66? The answers remain a mystery, Skywalker as elusive yet omnipresent in death as he was in life.

--

[1]Anakin Skywalker would go on to make quite a career for himself as Darth Vader. The circumstances of this change in trajectory are unknown. As a result, many historians doubt the credibility of the claim that Skywalker and Vader were the same person; while Luke Skywalker has gone on record stating his father was Vader, Anakin Skywalker’s heroic image during the Clone Wars and Vader’s brutal one during the Empire create such a radical juxtaposition reconciling them is nearly impossible, especially in the absence of an explanation for the 180-degree switch over the course of 24 hours.

[2]The historical record demonstrates several instances when they in fact discouraged it, most notably 22 BBY when a reporter snuck into Kenobi’s rooms at the Jedi Temple. Although neither the reporter nor Kenobi ever recounted what happened, the reporter went on to quit his job the next day and moved to Naboo to be a shaak farmer.  

[3]The most popular misconception was that both died together while trying to save the younglings in the Jedi Temple. This misconception persists to this day; ask someone off the street how Anakin Skywalker died, and they’ll probably answer with a story about Anakin Skywalker’s last stand against Vader after Vader killed Kenobi.

[4]Those who subscribe to the claim that Skywalker was Vader would answer that he died on the second Death Star after killing Palpatine, based on the testimony of Luke Skywalker. This claim causes another fierce debate among historians, as Vader infamously was fanatically loyal to Palpatine. Historians have yet to find out (1) what created this loyalty in Vader and (2) what ended it. Luke Skywalker has asserted that his father died saving him, but that simultaneously answers the second question while making the first even more incomprehensible.  

[5]One particularly interesting fact relates to his romantic life; while Skywalker ending up having children, Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, during the Clone Wars he was infamous for never giving women a second glance. The Jedi weren’t a celibate order, so many underground forums existed with proof of various Jedi and their proclivities – no one ever had any evidence of Skywalker, however. The mother of the Skywalker twins remains a mystery to history. Even the twins themselves have stated they are unaware of her identity.  

[6]Interviews were rare because Skywalker outright refused to do them. The Jedi once insulted a Bothan representative who requested to meet with him by sending his clone captain instead. According to the Bothan’s notes, the clone appeared to be very used to dealing with dignitaries and the notes implied that this was a reoccurring pattern of behavior on Skywalker’s part.

[7]One subject claimed that he remembered Skywalker going on record to describe the holonet as “chucklefuckheaded freaks,” in the wake of a meme about the attractiveness of Skywalker’s left eyebrow.  

[8]The author is sure many of his older readers will remember the schoolyard game of Skywalker and Kenobi, popular with younglings at the end of the Clone Wars. The question of Skywalker versus Kenobi is a weighted one when considering the next few decades of galactic history – who won in the end is still as much up for debate as it was decades ago on those school playgrounds.  

[9]Skywalker was also a political tool. But Skywalker without Skywalker and Kenobi is like having a pair of one bladed scissors – fundamentally missing something.

[10]The fate of Skywalker’s Padawan, Ahsoka Tano, is unknown.

even as a shadow, even as a dream

The tomb preserved everything perfectly. 

Her image was preserved for all eternity in the stained glass. It felt almost larger than life, with her regnal portrait transferred to the stained glass. Her brown tresses framed her face sharply, and her cold eyes carried grace and class in a way that even her best speeches never truly brought on. The immaculate image she sought to cultivate every time that he saw her get ready for in the Senate was perfect. An icon for the ages. 

She stares at him in final judgment; the tone, the serenity, it all carried him back to another woman, with green locks and pale skin, who stood for light and paid the price for her folly. In another life, when his deepest nightmares merely encroached on his reality rather than merge with it, he imagined himself in black with pale skin, holding the weapon shakily as everything bled and suffered to its death. He’d sit the ashes he’d made, hovering over a body, weapon impaling as his bloody hands wrapped around the handle as the Force screamed what did you do. 

My nightmares were always my reality, only I was too weak to see it. I could only hide, and when running was impossible, I crumbled and burned everything else for a chance to escape only to fall into the fire I set ablaze. 

Vader stalks through the mausoleum, footsteps dull and angry despite the hesitance in their master. The doors whistled quietly as they shut, the small thud echoing through the chamber until it became a deafening roar. His cape swished ominously, frighteningly cheery and disturbing large swaths of air. Everything about his presence in the tomb was foul, unnatural and inhumane, yet he felt drawn to it. 

When he finally gained the arrogance to reenter Naboo and attend her mausoleum, he stopped in front of the carved doors for two minutes. His background swirled in that Force-damned red tinge, his limbs weighed him until it felt like agony to simply remain upright, and his breathing so loud it almost managed to drown out the last words of a strangled woman. 

I love you…..Anakin..

Her coffin had her image carved into it, and for a moment he reaches out, to tenderly stroke her face, and he withdraws. He is a monster, she is dead. He will forever hate himself to death, and deny himself the release of impalement, for he would never deserve it. She would remain dead, the galaxy would spin on its uncaring rotation, oblivious to the rage he wreaked upon it. He loved her, oh how he loved her, but that love could not keep her. He'd love her as misery loved him, and even misery's tight fingers felt like a loose grip as he remembered choking the life from her. He once may have proclaimed his desire to move the stars for her joy, to warp reality to her whims, to burn her enemies, smiling at their agonizing screams and to wretch the eyes from her enemies and string them like pearls, but that life was over. None of that weak man, of the lakes of Varykino, of an office corner in Coruscant, of a wine bottle on a speeder exists.

He settles for kneeling, and almost scoffs at the delusions he enjoys laboring under. For all of his denials, hatred and numb terror, he is powerless at her hands. Death, for all of its unstoppable malice and vitriol, could not crush his weakness. 

The whiteness of everything, the morning star’s light filtering through the stained glass, the marble arches and walkways, her coffin, the last image of her that he would ever see, repelled him. The purity, the kindness, the goodness, it all fell into a mockery of sorts. Everything that she dedicated herself towards, he proved himself to be the antithesis of. Her Republic was overthrown, fallen with him to create his Empire. Her belief in the goodness of the Jedi? Lost to the cold sweeps of times, which would wash the Jedi’s deeds away until they were nothing more than an ancient memory. 

The cold marble seemed to freeze into his joints, almost as a warning. Leave, do not return. Poison this place no longer, demon.  

And when Darth Vader turned to leave, he could feel arms around him. He wasn’t sure whether they were holding him in place or dragging him out: kicking, punching, screaming leave leave before he infected her forever. 

your vaderblogging gives me life. keep up the anakinposting, i am here for all the new human rights violations youre inventing. tumblr wont let me send this while i'm logged in or i would.

i can't believe tumblr is trying to suppress the vaderbloggers like this. rise up let's get anakinposting