May the 4th be with you
He was a window into the sunlit meadow of The Force
- Revenge of the Sith Novelization by Matthew Stover
“It was Obi-Wan and Anakin again from the good old days” OBI WAN KENOBI: A JEDI’S RETURN
Sheev Palpatine after yet ANOTHER one of his apprentices becomes obsessed with Obi-Wan.
i draw a lot these days idk what happened (i predict a strong artblock very soon)
it’s actually soooo funny to me that qui gon dies when he runs ahead without obi wan because that’s like. so quintessentially Him. truly a man who died the way he lived: diving headfirst into a situation he was not at all prepared for against the advice of anyone with common sense
Obi-Wan sizing up Dooku: Anakin, we'll take him together.
Anakin: I'm taking him now!
Obi-Wan staring off into the distance while Anakin is immediately taken out: *hello darkness my old friend*
scalding hot take: yoda and obi-wan were right to tell luke not to go to bespin. wanting to save his friends was a good intention, but the only things luke accomplishes on bespin are getting his hand cut off and very nearly falling to his death. the friends he was there to save end up having to save him.
Jedi are calm. Jedi are calm in the way of a smoking pistol, an overcoiled spring, an arrow nocked to a bowstring. Jedi are passive in the way of a coursing river, a ticking bomb, an exhale of a marksman. Jedi are wise in the way of an animal that knows it must fight or flee, a tree that’s weathered too many storms, a being with too much trauma. Jedi are serene in the way of the ocean in the eye of a hurricane, the top down view of a thunderhead, the surgeon cutting out a cancer. Jedi require the smallest impetus to explode into action, to wreak havoc, to destroy entire armies and fleets with the smallest of actions. Jedi have the power of gods, to create and destroy and protect and save, to break or bend the universe to their will, to control minds and hearts and enslave the galaxy - or free it. This is why, when it comes to it, when it all comes down to the choices a single Jedi makes, to align themselves with the Will of the Force or to redirect it to their own ends, when it all comes down to a single Jedi and a smoking, cauterized hole caused by a surgical, impassive execution - when the fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance on the thread that connects a single Jedi to the living Force… Jedi are calm.
champagneammu
“I sat with my anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief.”
— C.S. Lewis (via onlinecounsellingcollege)
No matter what rian johnson does in the future even if he makes the most earth shattering amazing film of all time i will Never. forgive him for his star wars crimes. ever. that is the one thing me and cis white men have in common
Fandom: “Mace Windu is such a stick in the mud that he wouldn’t know a joke if it bit him in the a–”
Canon: [Mace Windu making terrible puns while being flung around and caught with the Force by fellow Jedi]
A complete list of perfect characters who are the bedrock of all goodness upon which the galaxy is built:
- Obi-Wan Kenobi
Obi-Wan and his ✧･ﾟ: * fabulous ✧･ﾟ:* hair OBI-WAN KENOBI (2022)
there is something so fascinating to me about obi-wan's mindset as he decides "he dies or i do, it ends today" and goes to face his death in part vi. like he is so aware that his whole life is centered on this conflict, his ostensibly-failed life's project (training the boy), and he's willing to sacrifice it all in the quest of finishing what he started (killing anakin). he clearly sees the task of dealing with his rogue former apprentice as his responsibility and his responsibility alone (he will do what he must), and yet despite this degree of conviction, he leaves vader weak and screaming after him as he walked away.
i’m stuck on figuring out why he would do that, why he would retreat from victory. what in-character reason is best to explain it? is it just that he couldn't strike down an injured, unarmed man? i suppose he was there to kill anakin, and yes, he succeeded when anakin-his-old-friend truly, finally died in his mind, but he spared the monster that took his place. i know he came to the realization that protecting luke and leia, the hope for the future, was more important than the past, but to leave the past alive, lingering, screaming after him for resolution? it's a fascinating character choice for him to leave.
This is one of those things that I wish the show had tweaked a little, that Obi-Wan had to make the choice between finishing off Vader and going to save Luke, something along those lines, because by all rights he should have killed Vader, he’s a danger to others, Obi-Wan knows that. Because we can all see the writers going, “Well, something something, Vader has to be alive for the OT, something something.” and I’m not sure any answer to this can hold up to deep scrutiny, including the one I’m about to lobby forth. But here’s my best view of Obi-Wan’s character: He can’t do it because the grief is too raw, even when he’s let go of Anakin. When he walks away from Vader, when he’s not confronted directly with Vader’s face (which he has seen Anakin’s face under that mask now) he can let go of that grief, he can move on, as a Jedi must, to not get consumed by those feelings. But face to face with Vader? He can’t do it, the undertow of his feelings would pull him back down and it wouldn’t be a kill in protection of life, it would be hopelessly entangled in his feelings for Anakin, that killing Darth Vader would be revenge, at best. Obi-Wan, as a Jedi, cannot do that. Revenge is not the Jedi way. Killing out of grief for the loss of your friend is not the Jedi way. His connection to the Force would risk leading him down a horrible path if he were to do so, because the Force works based on your emotions and mindset and motivations. This is why the task must fall to someone who isn’t undone just by hearing Anakin’s name, someone who must confront him, but who is able to kill him without possibly losing themselves, if Vader forces that scenario on him. (This is what GL has said was Obi-Wan’s motivation with Luke, not that Luke must kill Vader, but that he had to be prepared for the possibility.)(Luke loves his father, but not the way Obi-Wan loved him, the way that he sees everything that Anakin used to be, the way Obi-Wan and Anakin can never be free of their history until they both die. Obi-Wan’s love for Anakin can never be divorced from the children that Anakin killed, the Jedi that Anakin destroyed, that even when he loves Anakin, it still comes with the very intimate knowledge of how Obi-Wan knew him as he was.) This works as a contrast against Ahsoka and Anakin’s confrontation, when Vader says he destroyed Anakin Skywalker to her, she’ll avenge him. “Revenge is not the Jedi way.” And, because he has stolen that path from her already, she might as well walk it, “I am no Jedi.” She can try to go down that path that Obi-Wan cannot, because he is a Jedi and she is not. For him to strike Vader down, he can’t separate his feelings for Anakin from Vader, it would be revenge, it would be grief motivating him, he would be seizing on that pain and acting from that place of loss. He cannot do that, he is a Jedi.
#obi wan tv show#newsw#i wondered about this too#because they just repeated what happened on mustafar#if he's now running to save luke#on mustafar he hurried to save padme because palpatine was getting near#and also he could be thinking vader's gonna die because he messed up his armor#plus of course what's said in this meta#lots of reasons#but idk imo in rots is was more convincing that he would leave
anakin is just so desperate to talk to obi-wan, even more than killing him, it's essential to him to have a conversation with him wherein he gets the last word, because he's been sitting, stewing for a decade that obi-wan beat him, destroyed his body, but more than that, he was also the one who defined the terms of the relationship when they parted. you were my brother, i loved you. anakin desperately needs obi-wan to acknowledge his power, his identity as vader, or else it almost doesn't count for him, it isn't real. his revenge demands that obi-wan knows it's happening, the solidity of his new identity requires obi-wan to agree to forget anakin, and set vader free from this shackle of the past. it's like anakin needs to prove to himself that he really is vader by passing the final trial of obi-wan's ratification of his identity. he needs to double down and prove it to both of them that it was really done, that anakin is really dead, and it works. they both get what they wanted out of the conversation, both gaining the freedom to move on from being so caught and fixated on each other with so much unfinished business. when obi-wan says at the beginning, "he dies or i do, this ends today," he was both right and wrong about that, wrong in that both of them technically survived, but he was right that there was still a death—anakin was the one who died.
im sorry there is just something so sexy about how darth vader is this untouchable, unkillable dark menace to the entire galaxy, the son of the force and lord of the sith, and the only person who can defeat him is his old master, a hermit out of practice, all because nobody compromises vader like obi-wan, and nobody motivates obi-wan like vader.
vader cannot defeat the man who trained anakin, the man who loved him, because their history is so deep and their intimacy so high. it's like vader's terrifying evil superpowers just don't work against obi-wan, who is something so close to him as to be part of himself, who uses his own favorite moves against him in combat, and can always match and best him.
vader can wear a mask all he likes, but with obi-wan he doesn't have a false illusion surrounding him, the useful fog of fear that makes people curl up, hide, and lose to him. unlike everyone in the galaxy apart from sidious, obi-wan can really see vader and really know him, and vader can't defend against that. fighting obi-wan really does make vader seem weak.
