Star Wars (tm) (pain) - Tumblr Posts
that one scene where obi-wan tells leia “u don’t need those gloves” and then immediately turns around and buys them for her further cements my theory that he would have been the BEST uncle in another life
Thinking about that line in the leaked tales of the jedi teaser- "The best way I can protect you is to teach you how to protect yourself" (Anakin is saying this to Ahsoka). Man this line is making me feel things. Maybe it's just the music and visuals (cough cough and hearing Matt Lanter as Anakin again). Or maybe it's the Clone Wars nostalgia because good lord that line makes me think about the Padawan Lost arc. Just thinking about how Anakin's desire to teach Ahsoka to protect herself leads to Ahsoka saying the famous "All I had was your training, and the lessons you taught me. And because of you, I did survive. And not only that, I was able to lead others to survive as well." Just thinking about how we might just see the training that taught Ahsoka to survive not only in that arc, but in the Wrong Jedi arc, and the Siege of Mandalore/Order 66, not to mention through the rebellion era and beyond and forever because Dave isn't killing her off anytime soon lol. And I'm thinking about Anakin, how he needs his loved ones to survive, the sternness in his voice when he says the "train you to protect yourself" line and "again" after Ahsoka is knocked out by the clones. He has to prepare Ahsoka because he knows that she's being thrown out into a war as an inexperienced little padawan and he can't lose her. Anakin has to push her now because he can't bear to lose her. Remember how he dealt with Ahsoka being kidnapped in the padawan lost arc? He would never be able to deal with Ahsoka's loss in general, but especially so if he felt as though he hadn't prepared her well enough. (Imagine how much he probably blamed himself for not training her well enough after she left the Order-) So he pushes her to get up and train again and again even though in the trailer we see Ahsoka failing over and over because he knows he can't always be there to protect her and so he needs to teach her to protect herself. And it all ties back to Anakin's need to protect his loved ones, not only for their sake, but because he isn't able to live with himself when he does lose them.
I’m now wondering did something happen to Ahsoka for Anakin to be like: “yeah, I need to train her even more” or maybe he just notices her weak spots during a training session or he’s just being his natural overprotective self?
Either way can’t wait
@/gizkalord: they’re going to make it explicit that anakins training is what helps ahsoka survive order 66 aren’t they.
At it again, are they?
One of the most heartbreaking things about Trilla, really, is that–if you watch her, as the game progresses, it becomes so crushingly obvious that Trilla Suduri was never a warrior.
Like, this isn’t me going “oh poor little baby,” this isn’t a desire to woobify, I really genuinely do not think Trilla handled the war well at all. I don’t think she was a fighter. I don’t think she was even a passable soldier. And I think that fucking broke her before the Inquisitorius even got the chance.
It’s hard to articulate because all the evidence for it is like…it’s a thousand tiny moments and all of them sound very thin in isolation, but the thing is they’re consistent.
Like, okay, an example:
(source)
Compare that to Trilla’s fine control and carefully deliberate stances in a duel. Compare that to literally every other experienced Force-user we’ve ever seen deflecting blaster bolts.
That’s fucking sloppy.
Those are massive, messy, energy-inefficient, time-wasting movements that leave her wide open.
Trilla was a padawan during the Clone Wars. As best we can figure, she would have been about 17; just around Ahsoka’s age, a little bit younger but not by much. An older teenage padawan who served in the Clone Wars should be better at deflecting blaster bolts than this.
It’s not an animation error or something, we see characters animated with precise and controlled motions in this game. Trilla is just really bad at the one thing that should be subconscious muscle memory.
(And how stressful must that have been to her master? Cere, who’s extremely gentle and selfless but still a fighter, a survivor, a field commander, with this sweet girl she half-raised who seemingly cannot learn a basic survival skill but is expected to lead battalions?)
(Even aside from that and allowing for the handicap of that fucking helmet, Trilla’s reactions in combat outside the tightly-controlled arena-like environments she arranges to face Cal in…well, you see it up in that gif, a bit. She looks over her shoulder, she stops in unwise places, she doesn’t actually have good battlefield instincts. I think Cere reflexively ripping Cal out of the way to open fire–stop staring and take cover, damn it, padawan–was a very practiced move for them, during the Clone Wars.)
Anyway: The fact that Trilla is absolute dogshit at blaster deflection despite the timeline…says something, about her. About what she would have been like as a padawan. Her suitability in a martial setting and her inability to adapt to it.
Don’t get me wrong, she’s a great duelist, certainly–but saber-on-saber dueling was like…academic, in the pre-war prequel era. The Sith were gone, nobody but Jedi used lightsabers, so the odds of you ever actually needing to know how to handle yourself in a saber fight were basically nil. Who are you going to actually fight? It would have been a sport, a form of meditation, an art form, but it wasn’t…real. No competition fencer is training with the intent of someday having to fight for their lives.
Combine those things and what I hear is: A nerd. Fairly sheltered before the war, probably easily overwhelmed, not terribly confident (except, probably, in the duelling ring, because that’s a hobby, it’s a meditation, it’s a martial art that deepens her connection to the Force and gives her a physical outlet and it’s not real.)
And then, solidifying that, we have our flashbacks from Cal accidentally overdosing on the psychometry–Trilla’s own memories of Cere’s abandonment, the raw panic in her voice, the hyperventilating, the way her voice shakes, the way she sobs in open fear before the torture has a chance to start.
Of course she was barely more than a child; of course none of this is a criticism. She was alone and afraid in the middle of the fucking apocalypse, and the fact that she wasn’t defiant and confident in those circumstances is not evidence of anything, really.
Except that, well, we have seen what typical reactions to stress and fear from other wartime padawans look like. There’s fear, there’s pleading, there’s “wait, master, don’t go”. And then there’s the wild incoherent terror of “DON’T LEAVE US,” the way her voice is high and unstable as she tries and fails to reassure her younglings, the fact that the softest and most tender we’ve ever heard Cere’s voice is when she’s explaining her plan to her padawan–whom she is clearly used to having to calm down in overwhelming situations. We see Trilla instinctively grip Cere’s arm and then let go, which also hints at a reflexive pattern–something she’s done before.
(The fact that Cere’s last words to her are not “protect them” or “get them to safety”. Cere’s last words to her are “stay with the younglings, Trilla”. I don’t think she meant anything by that. I’m not sure Trilla shares my confidence.)
Trilla’s responses in a highly traumatic situation are completely normal reactions…for a civilian child who’s in way over her head. Not a military commander in a war zone.
Trilla was never a warrior.
But the Inquisitorius didn’t need Trilla Suduri, did they.
THIS FUCKING BROKE ME, because Obi-Wan isn’t prone to hallucinations, like okay maybe he has finally so stressed that he cracked under the pressure, but I don’t think so, because we don’t really see any other indications of it, but instead we do see that these two sense each other through the Force, that the MINUTE Obi-Wan uses the Force again, Vader’s eyes snap open and they feel each other. We see later in this episode, Obi-Wan is hit with a tidal wave of a psychic onslaught when he sense Vader. The camera tilts and wobbles and the music vibrates in a way that makes you feel underwater in both scenes. They feel the same. These two people are connected through the Force, we know they always will be, that Vader will sense Obi-Wan on the Death Star, and I think he’s sensing Obi-Wan here as well, just as Obi-Wan is seeing him. But what is destroying me is that Obi-Wan sees him as he knows Anakin, the unburned version, the one who stands with his arms wrapped tightly around his middle, in almost a vulnerable sort of way. The one whose cloak is almost too big for his frame, the one who would fiddle with the giant sleeves of his robes when he was nervous, the one who huddles in them like a shield. The way Obi-Wan remembers him. The way that some core part of Darth Vader still remembers himself as, especially when connecting with Obi-Wan. He’s so full of hate and rage that he cannot admit to this part of himself, whatever good is in him at when he feels Obi-Wan, he can’t admit to it because Obi-Wan is the part of himself that he wants to kill off, Hayden has said that probably half a dozen times in interviews, that he wants to destroy Obi-Wan because he wants to destroy that part of himself. And this is what he wants to destroy. The part of himself that is vulnerable and lonely and not the terrifying murder cyborg, the part that Obi-Wan Kenobi sees, the part that Anakin will always remember so long as Obi-Wan is alive and has hope. Anakin cannot admit to what he’s done, he cannot go back after all of this, Obi-Wan will always know him and what he did, it’s only Luke that can offer him a future that he can accept, because Luke is only the future, not the past, Luke will never see him like this. But this is still the core of who Anakin Skywalker is, the one that Obi-Wan Kenobi sees.
I cannot believe this show forced me to listen to Obi-Wan say Quinlan’s name with the context from this episode of how both he and Leia want to go home. They wonder about their biological families, wish that they knew more about them, but when the gut-punch moment comes, it’s their adoptive family they want to go back to. “I want to go home.” “Quinlan.” I am on the FLOOR because these two narrative parallels miss their adoptive families and, while Leia may be able to go back to hers for awhile, she’s going to end up just like Obi-Wan, who would give anything to see his dead family again, I am IN PAIN.
- matthew stover
“Of course. It ends where it began. A desert planet with twin suns.”
“I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace”
L a s t k n o w n l o c a t i o n s - O r d e r 6 6
not to start whacking the hornet’s nest but i think the most tragic part of ahsoka and anakin’s story together is that from the very first moment, it’s all based on a lie.
ahsoka meets anakin after aotc - he’s already committed an unjustifiable atrocity. he’s already slaughtered the tusken people, and as far as we know, ahsoka never finds out about that. and you know, that would completely and wildly screw up ahsoka’s perceptions of anakin
and i would go so far as to say it would screw with her image of anakin more than the vader reveal. because the vader reveal is like. oh shit your older brother/ best friend has turned into a monster and has committed genocide and is currently trying to kill you
but the tusken massacre reveal is like. oh shit your older brother who tucks you in bed when you’re sick and who makes you laugh so hard your ribs hurt has, for the entire time he’s loved you and you loved in return, been a murderer, and has actively been hiding a horrible, unjustifiable secret
the vader reveal is tragic because the anakin that ahsoka knows and remembers is, to her knowledge, gone forever. the tusken massacre reveal is tragic because the anakin that ahsoka knows and loves is based on a lie
before tales of the jedi Vader looking for Ahsoka past o66 made sense in a way but was mostly taken as angst fuel NOW after tales of the Jedi we know anakin practically trained ahsoka for this by having the clones shoot stun bolts at her until she went from collapsing from exhaustion to twisting and twirling in the air and avoiding the shots in a way that almost looked easy! Now we know why he still hoped to find her alive because he thought maybe his teachings had saved her in the end.