You Will Try.

you will try.

hello, today i’m here to talk about the effect that obi-wan has on people, like there is something about him that everyone in star wars universe just loves, whenever it’s in a good or bad way.

you go back to prequels and the clone wars and obi-wan is just everyone’s favorite. the animals, the kids, he walks into a village and people just trust him that he will do his best for them. ironically, even the villains are just soft for obi-wan (dooku, ventress) to the point they are just obsessed with him (maul, grievous, vader, reva)

i mean, you can write this to the way obi-wan looks and the way he walks and talks, he is master jedi but that doesn’t apply for the kenobi series and yet -  haja walks to the inquisitor, when he knows reva can just easily kill him, and stalls for time. tala throws her cover away without a second thought for him. leia, the 10yo that knows him for like a day, says “bring him back” and walks alone into the dark tunel.

at this point obi-wan looks like an unwashed rat. he is grumpy dad, his hands are shaky with the lightsaber and he is just…sad. but people that know him for five minutes, still do crazy sh*t for him. well, it’s because obi-wan is the light. he is the light in leia’s analogy about being afraid of the dark. he feels safe and trustworthy in very unsafe and distrustful world. people fall for that.

notice that the only person in the galaxy that never cared for obi-wan, that ignored him and dismissed him as unimportant, was sidious. the exact opposite of everything that obi-wan represents.

the way obi-wan is the first to hold the children, the one who actually welcomes them into the world, it's the way he looks at baby luke with SUCH WONDER, HOPE, DEEPEST SORROW & LOVE

something something the way obi-wan & padme are each other's proxies which enables the transference of motherhood and how obi-wan is the one who gets 'cradling a new born child' close-up shot usually reserved for the mother instead.

*foaming at the mouth in utter derangment* isn't it....isn't it ironic how lucas said he needed vader as the father but needed a father figure so he created obi-wan for the OG trilogy, but the prequels accidentally (and unintentionally) place him in the narrative position of the mother.

by have him directly take over from padme; both LITERALLY and SYMBOLICALLY. their similarities in demeanour, personalities and their relation to anakin - as apologists, as devotees, as those who believe in him- makes their narrative roles transferrable.

how making padme die in childbirth and obi-wan be the first to hold the children to - figuratively- be the one who brings them into this world, keeps them safe and watches over them makes him a mother figure in exile, in direct opposition to anakin.

maiden -> mother -> crone

quotes from:

time of death by cavan scott

lone wolf by abel g. pena

100% agree and will throw in my two cents that it's gotta be maul that turns him somehow. the closest obi-wan ever gets to the dark side in canon imo is the fight vs. maul in tpm. like, that's straight-up revenge on his face, and there's a definite parallel between obi-wan cutting maul in half and obi-wan later being cut in half by vader in anh. it's not a very jedi way to kill someone. ofc in tcw there's an excellent arc where obi-wan faces maul again and chooses the light, but like you said, if there's no universe where he would ever make a different choice, that isn't really a choice at all.

i get the sense that the dark side is a one-and-done kind of thing, you give in once and you're evil forever (unless you have an extremely persistent son), so really obi-wan just has to use a dark side technique to kill maul and that's it, he's a dark sider. there would have to be some palpatine (or dooku?) influence leading up to it, since there's a difference between dark side and sith.

his character would diverge too far from canon at that point for me to be interested in the fic, though. it's hard to imagine what he would do as a sith after killing maul. i could maaaybe picture a dark obi-wan that strongly focuses on the religion half of sith religion, but idk. that's all i've got - not very satisfying or fanfic-able, unfortunately.

Sith! Obi-Wan: Is it even possible?

Sith! Obi-Wan is such a fascinating concept to me, because it’s so unlikely. Like frankly it feels even less likely than Anakin’s redemption, and that redemption being so incredibly unlikely but still possible is literally the thing that makes the OT so powerful. Like it’s baked into the premise.

And Obi-Wan falling can’t be impossible, because that would take all the narrative power out of him always choosing good. But like, this man has literally had everything happen to him, and he doesn’t turn. He has moments where he has to recenter himself, but he always does it. He’s such a wonderful balance of “constantly looks like hot shit” with “but on the deepest level of his soul he’s untouchable.”

It should be impossible.

But I believe it at every turn.

People aren’t fucking around when they describe him as one of the best Jedi there ever was.

So I am fascinated by the idea of a Sith Obi-Wan, because what could possibly turn him?

Not torture, not loss, not grief, not losing his padawan, not having to fight his padawan, not beliving he’d killed his padawan, not finding out he didn’t kill his padawan, not watching over that padawan’s kid for twenty years, not death, not war, not walking away from Satine, not Satine dying in his arms, not losing Qui-Gon Jinn, not Dooku’s best efforts at temptation, not the genocide of his people, not being set on fire, not the existence of the Death Star, not twenty years of being a hermit, not Melida-Daan, not whatever Xanatos was doing, not every atrocity the Empire ever committed,

But it can’t be impossible, because he’s still a human, he’s not the Force itself.

I’ve read some Sith Obi-Wan fics, but they’re all either unconvincing on this point, or have to resort to saying, “Obi-Wan is a Sith but he’s not evil,” as though that isn’t the contradiction of all time (No shade to these fics, not everything needs to be perfectly convincing, and I’m not against writing a character in a certain way just cause of the aesthetic. I know how to use the back button; I kept reading cause I enjoyed them overall).

I just.

I don’t know. Do people have ideas? Theories? Fic recommendations?

Cause my only idea is an Obi-Wan who has literally never heard of the Jedi and was raised from an infant as a Sith and barely resembles the Obi-Wan we know at all.

Some splendiferous tags by @unlovedanimals on my other goofysilly post:

They make a great point that I wanted to piggyback off of in a less goofysilly way than the original.

Obi-Wan is not a rule-follower (as established by the recklessness and sheer amount of cunt served), but he is a principled man. His principles are likely a large contributor to why he is not a rule-follower. The whole Melida/Daan thing in Legends wouldn't have happened if Obi-Wan valued rules (and even respect) over what he believed was right. Actually, most events in his life seem to be him getting pulled into some bullshit because he's trying to abide by his principles and do the right thing. The man couldn't mind his own business if he wanted to. The Situations haunt him.

That strong internal moral compass lead him well up until the Clone Wars, when the amount of factors to consider became too great, so he had to slim his attention down to his immediate concerns in keeping people alive. Principles can only get you so far, especially when a creepy guy in a cloak is actively trying to ruin your life and the lives of everyone around you. Obi-Wan's persuasiveness, strategizing, and arrogance were great assets for a general, but ultimately he was too principled and too kind for war.

Some Jedi (Anakin and other fallen Jedi, especially) blame the Order for this, that, and the other because of its adherence to rules and the Code, but notably Obi-Wan doesn't. He reflects, he sees the faults and the missteps (i.e. how they set Anakin up to fail), but he doesn't blame because he never really followed the rules. He followed his own principles, so if he were to blame anyone it would be himself.

What people mistake for following the rules is actually him trying to provide structure for Anakin. Children and people in general do well when there are parameters in place for them to follow if they don't have experience or knowledge to fall back on. The structure is clumsy because Obi-Wan was so young when he became Anakin's master, but he did his best to establish expectations. He wasn't perfect, but how could he be? Perfection isn't human and would make for a very boring story.

The tragedy in Obi-Wan's character is how he's always trying to do what he feels is right even in a world that presents wrong after wrong, and every time he gets knocked down he stands back up, even in the face of his own mistakes.

And he's also a little bitch.

DO YOU KNOW THIS CHARACTER?