I Feel Like I Need To Clarify. I Like The Whole The Jedi Code Is Like An Itch; Their Compassion Leaves

I feel like I need to clarify. I like the whole “The Jedi code is like an itch; their compassion leaves a trail.” thing but more as a ‘values that the best and most true Jedi hold’ and that sort of futile idealism people believe applies to the jedi as a whole.

But I hate when people take that line and use it as a reason to discount people arguing against the Jedi.

Like you need to see the difference between ideals and values vs action.

I love that u love ur jedi and what they stand for, but i need you to understand that the jedi actually SUCK and thats okay (for you to like them in spite of such). Stop trying to convince people of their goodness bc for sure, some of them are good, but that doesnt make them representative.

The jedi fell bc they were a working part of a corrupt system and u literally can’t take their responsibility for that away just bc u wunna hold their hand and giggle. Root for them but dont talk to anyone amidst your delusion where the meow meow jedi can do no wrong. Do you understand?

“Their compassion leaves a trail…its like an itch” and I would see so many people use it like “See? The jedi are peak perfection and good!” and im like, “No! They arent! Anakin’s entire origin story is a prime example as to why!”

This was unironically canon:

Anakin: tries to literally do the most for one ounce of approval

Obiwan: 😐 your desire for praise will be your undoing.

Anakin: 😦

Can you not see he is DESPERATE for something he’s done to be recognised. His inner child is begging to be seen. His outer child is doing its best to be worthy of it and every time he thinks “this is it, this time—“ he’s basically smited.

Anakin knows love and affection through the eyes of a slave. Blunt honesty and proof through care and being there (action) and staying through thick and thin. He doesn’t need you to burn down a planet because that’s HIS love language, thats how HE shows he cares, not how he needs others to show it.

Because he feels he’s not good enough—burning down a planet, in his mind, shows the people he cares for that he would do anything for them of it’s in his power to do so, and that he really means it when he says he loves them. Grand gestures are how HE shows love because he feels like anything else is as inadequate as he is

Being abandoned and never told he’s loved and cared for is a big reason his affections and attachments turn obsessive. He’s never been given anything concrete, he’s never shown that people care in a way he can understand. They think “I said hi to him and spoke up for him and trained him and gave him camaraderie—thats proof I love him” and think Anakin can properly differentiate it between duty and not.

He thinks, “my master is my master but he only cares for the Jedi and I can’t live without him but he could without me bc I’m a burden and will never be good enough or perfect like Obi-wan” bc Obi-wan isn’t honest with himself or Anakin, and you can see this etched into the very lines of his story no matter where you look.

He doesn’t say “i love you” to Anakin’s face until he’s literally chopped Anakin’s limbs off and left him to die on Mustafar, and even then it’s ambiguous. Anakin understands there is SOME sort of affection between him and Obi-wan that goes both ways but in the end, he never feels like he can truly tell Obi-wan anything without being shunned, misunderstood, or lectured, when all he needs is someone to talk to and hold close without fearing theyll leave him behind when he disappoints them.

One of the only people to ever outright tell Anakin what they feel was his mom, and she ended up dead bc Anakin was told he was being irrational about her and his visions of her death; and the fact that his mother was one of the only people to ever tell him she loved him and was proud, and that she was one of the only people who would never turn her back on him when he wasnt perfect (bc she thought he was perfect anyway. Her love for anakin was unconditional whereas everyone elses’ seemed to be very obviously conditional) and that terrified him bc following her death, the only other person left was Padmé, in their very unhealthy, very suspicious, co-dependant romance.

But even then, since she was the ONLY ONE he knew for sure how they felt, he was terrified something would happen to her and that she would leave him too—be it through death or finding someone to replace him (visions + irrationally believing she and Obi-wan were having an affair). He was obsessive and possessive and I honestly can’t blame him, especially from a psychological standpoint—and even more especially, from a child psychology standpoint. He was never given a reason or a chance to nurture any secure attachment style, especially when faced with the first 10 years of his life as a slave? Yikes.

He was obsessed with his relationships because he never had anything else to hold on to (from his perspective), and do you know who took gleeful advantage of that? Palpatine.

Anakin only wanted to be good enough, to make people proud, to give them a reason to tell him they love him. And maybe the one person he wanted to lure in the most was Obi-wan, who viciously shunned him for that, even when he would sparsely give anakin the praise he wanted so desperately

Anakin said, “I beat you! I won!” All giddy and self-assured after a spar with Obi-wan and instead of allowing that feeling of accomplishment, of the desire to make his master proud, Obi-wan just looked at him and said with shame, “Your need for praise will be your undoing,” and in the end, he wasn’t wrong. It was a self fulfilling prophecy.

Because in the end. The only person left who told Anakin he was proud was fucking slimy Palpatine, the dark lord of the goddamn sith.

Unfortunately, a lot of explicitly pro-jedi/jedi apologist fandom participants like to “interpret” the Jedi code themselves. They make these incredibly long-winded, well thought-out posts explaining the meaning and how it works in practice and how the jedi embody this—BUT they never actually consider or address the literal canon aspects. Things we actually see with our eyes: the novelisations, the games, the shows, the movies.

You’d think, therefore they must be, right? Wrong. You say this is what the Jedi are like and while that’s beautifully wonderful and I wish you were right—that’s literally not what happens. Literally not what they’re like at all. It’s actively part of the plot.

I think your interpretations of the code are great but you act like that’s the reality we’re actually living in. You act like that’s what the shows tell you, rather than just what you want to believe based on your own interpretation of the code itself (ignoring lack of congruency we sometimes see in the shows or movies).

My point is, you can love the jedi while acknowledging their VERY obvious flaws. The flaws that destroy them, corrupt them, misguide them, make them terrible people. The flaws that cannot be retconned by one writer saying “its an itch” while pretending Anakin’s “Anakin Skywalker is dead. I killed him” makes up for the horrible things Old Hermit Kenobi does with luke.

So yeah.

Lets at least be real when we’re loving who we love.

I would have to say Padme did not compromise herself, and when she chose Anakin everything had gone to Empire so I guess it was a moot point anyway.

Still, entirely agree with you on everything else.

I think the crux of the disconnect between Prequels era fans is that the Jedi supporters believe the Jedi are good and right, and it is on this that we should support, and the Jedi critical fans are like no one in this era is good and right, including the Jedi, and the fact that you won't admit the Jedi are wrong is driving us insane

Because frequently when Jedi supporters are arguing with me, they are dismissing the notion that the Jedi could ever do anything wrong and then bring up how awful Anakin is as a way to say I am wrong, because I support Anakin

Which I don't support Anakin????

I like him, he is an incredibly compelling character especially as someone who knows what it is like to repress your feelings and want so badly to hold onto the ones who care for you

But I don't support him, it's actually because I relate to him that I don't, I wish I could save him, I have compassion for him, but he killed people, he committed genocide, twice??? In the Prequels??? He is exactly the type of person who terrifies me in real life, I don't support him

My love of his character writing does not mean that I am overlooking his clear moral failings or even that agree with him, because I don't, I actually love his character more because he is written to be so flawed morally, he is an exploration of emotional repression and how wanting power, even if it is to save someone else can still make you a bad person, it is this complexity that drew me to him as a character

I am drawn to morally complex characters in spite of the fact that their actions go against my morals, because I personally find morally complex characters to be more compelling

So why then, if I like morally flawed characters do I have such an issue with the Jedi and their morals in particular

Quite simply, it's the way they aren't written (especially in the Clone Wars) with that same moral complexity, they are written as if they are moral good

And it is this framing of them that a lot of Jedi supporters have clearly sided with and made their reason to support the Jedi, they believe the Jedi are good and believe that fans should support morally good characters so they can't understand why I wouldn't support them

But the Jedi aren't morally good and I find the inability to acknowledge that alarming

The Prequels movies do a much better job of showing how their inaction leads to bad things, but even in the Prequels there isn't a full of acknowledgement of how far they have fallen

Whereas the Clone Wars just doesn't acknowledge it, at all, they flatten the story down so it has no moral complexity, they have clear cut good guys and bad guys, the Jedi are the good guys, no matter what, the bad guys are the Sith, their is the occasional attempt at making the morality of the Clone Wars more grey but it is inconsistent, and overall the approach is a binary

The issue is, in painting the Jedi as morally good, the Prequels era glosses over how they aren't, they aren't objectively good, no one in the Prequels era but in pretending that they are, you make the meta around the canon morally complex

You have people defending the Jedi's use of the clones, choice to ignore slaves and chain themselves to the Repiy, handling of Anakin and the Padawans in general, involvement in the war and everything else because the Jedi are framed as good guys

I have yet to meet anyone defending Anakin's actions because he is so clearly framed as the guy falling to the Dark Side, we are meant to mourn his fall but we aren't meant to think he was in the right

Not everything the Jedi did is bad, but enough is that placing them on a pedestal and calling them the heroes, acting like they don't deserve this slander when Jedi critical fans are just pointing out how the Jedi are morally compromised, is messed up

There is no moral high ground when it comes to the Prequels, everyone compromises themselves (including Padme, she stayed with Anakin,), but some fans want to act like there is and so we have a disconnect

JEDI SURVIVOR SPOILERS

Are people really having difficulty figuring out why an Imperial spy, a person who pretends to be someone they aren't in order to infiltrate and compromise anti-Imperial organizations from the inside, might be a little paranoid about turning their safe haven into a staging ground for an anti-Imperial organization harboring potentially thousands of strangers?

Bode knows the Empire, he knows they do not forgive or forget, and he knows they have eyes and ears in every shadow. He also knows that it just takes one infiltrator, one bad egg slipping past their defenses, to ruin the whole thing. How does he know this?

Because he's been that infiltrator. He's done it for years.

Cal doesn't get it. He doesn't know the Empire like Bode does. He doesn't understand that every single refugee that the Hidden Path brings to Tanalorr is a roll of the dice, and the Empire really only needs to win once, get one more spy, one more Bode past their defenses, to ruin everything. Cal doesn't understand just how rigged the game truly is, which is why Bode cannot let him gamble with his daughter's life.

(His mistake was not realizing, even after all they've been through, that you should always bet on Kestis.)

As I get older, the more I find that globalisation is a scam.

FUTURE ?

Have you ever wondered how our future would look like ? What they would wear ? How they would talk ? How is social media and globalization gonna affect this generation which is exposed to everything and anything ? Will all of us become more and more introverted ? Will we stop feeling depressed ? Will people stop scamming ??

The young me would have said that globalisation would be an opportunity to meet new people learn about their cultures and beliefs . It would be refreshing to know about new things . But recently I think that the future generation will lack a sense of self. They will find it difficult to identify with themselves . It's easy to get lost in the " routines " of this world.

@ letsgobrandon

To be fair:

The destruction of the Jedi Order was less a genocide and more of a religious conflict that the Jedi lost. The Jedi Order is a sect of the collective religious culture of 'Force Users,' and their destruction cannot really be considered genocide as the cultural group of 'Force Users' still exists albeit heavily restricted and controlled by the Sith during the Empire Era.

Secondly:

The entire point of the Prequel trilogy was that the Jedi contributed to their destruction. Their wilful ignorance, isolation, and insulation from the corruption of the Republic they insisted on protecting, to the point the Jedi Council, for example, caused a schism in the Order because they insisted that Jedi Masters act as Generals for the Clone Army regardless of the individual Jedi Master's wishes, led the Jedi to become entirely isolated and perhaps hated by the Republic they had sworn to protect.

Order 66 and the sacking of the Temple were executed to the surprise of the Jedi, and no Jedi was present when Sidious became Emperor of the Galaxy. No one, save for a few Senators like Organa, protected the Jedi when they fell, and during the Rebellion Era, even Organa himself did not approach the surviving Jedi to aid in the fight against the Empire. Somehow, the Jedi even managed to alienate their chosen one and drove him to the dark side, allowing Sidious to turn the Jedi's greatest weapon against themselves.

The Jedi bubbled themselves up and the Council refused to face the problems that faced their beloved Republic until it is too late. Palpatine exploited their ignorance, but it was the Jedi who were ignorant themselves in the first place. That was the lesson of the Prequel Trilogy, speak out and speak loud so that the people are aware and always ready to fight against corruption and oppression.

I've seen a lot of posts on my feed lately that have, in some way shape or form, said "the story of the Jedi is tragic cause the Jedi caused their own genocide" followed by a list of just...stuff that's either untrue or the other option would've been worse in that game of roulette that Palpatine set up specifically to force the Jedi to make questionable decisions and wear them down with the weight of them. (Untagged posts btw, if you're gonna post shit along these lines please for the love of fuck tag it "Jedi critical," there are tags for a reason)

So I'm here to outline why that's complete and utter bullshit in one easy, simple to understand, post! No matter what the Jedi did, or what you think they did, they did not cause their own genocide. The fault of their genocide is solely on those who chose to commit said genocide of their people and culture.

Ignoring the fact that Palpatine's entire plan, the whole point of everything that we see in the Prequels, was to kill off all of the Jedi and erase their culture--so he was gonna figure out some way to do it, with or without Anakin/the clones/Dooku/etc.

You cannot make someone commit genocide against you.

That is the stupidest argument ever.

Committing genocide is a choice, one that you actively have to make over and over again--which we see Anakin do, even long after all (or all except a measly few survivors, most of which were literal children in the Prequel-era and couldn't have possibly done anything to piss Anakin off) of the Prequel-era Jedi--aka the ones that people say "brought this on themselves"--were dead!

The Jedi Order as a whole could've been the shittiest, most repressed group of arrogant assholes the galaxy had ever seen. They could've called Anakin a whiny bitch to his face and told him that Dooku should've gone for his head instead of his arm. They could've danced on his mother's grave and had tea parties with the Tuskens.

And guess what?

They still could not have made Anakin and Palpatine commit genocide against them. It was their choice, and their choice alone.

The only people that had no choice in committing that genocide were the clones and guess who took that choice away from them? Because it certainly wasn't the fucking Jedi!

Which is hilarious because most of these posts I've seen have said something along the lines of "the Jedi used the clones as slaves," ignoring the fact that--even if that were true (and it's not)--Anakin and Palpatine used them as slaves too!

And it was so much worse when they did it because, not only were they not given a choice, they were fucking mind-controlled in order to commit genocide against their will! So they didn't even get the choice to refuse and face the consequences of that--which is an option for them during the Clone Wars, albeit a shitty one.

So no, the Jedi did not bring anything upon themselves.

Start holding Anakin responsible for his own shitty decisions, and start tagging your damn anti-Jedi and Jedi critical posts properly!