family tree, ethel cain // obi wan kenobi episode three, dir. deborah chow // as consciousness is harnessed to flesh, susan sontag
thinking about how the armorer
didn’t fight din for the darksaber after he said he’d taken off his helmet even though a) mandalorians will be cursed if an unworthy person wields it and b) she would have won easily
told din about the living waters instead of just saying there’s no way to redeem himself now that mandalore is a dead planet
let him keep his armor despite the whole “beskar belongs to mandalorians” thing
conclusion: the armorer believes din will restore mandalore in order to redeem himself in the living waters. also she is pro din for mand’alor
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.
yeah, i agree that was definitely the main reason he was upset. i think in bo-katan's case there was also an element of anger that she didn't follow the creed, but most of what set him off there was her attitude towards his beliefs rather than the things she herself believed.
(i'll make sure to tag you in my prejudice post once i get around to writing it!)
i don’t think we should be quick to trust anything bo-katan says about the children of the watch.
the main thing i’m suspicious of is her claim that they’re a fringe group. maybe they were in the clone wars era, but they’re clearly the dominant mandalorian faction right now. we know this because literally everyone in the show, not just din, thinks all mandalorians never take off their helmets. that perception wouldn’t be so widespread if the helmet thing were only practiced by a small group of religious zealots. i mean, this is galaxy-wide common knowledge. it’s not just din being sheltered by a cult.
Keep reading
I made a previous post here on how I go about writing various SW characters, but I think Din warrants his own post because he’s pretty unique in a lot of ways that can be difficult to translate into writing sometimes. A lot of people have asked me how I approach writing Din, so I thought I would share my notes!
Now, this is just how I write him personally. This isn’t meant to be a definitive interpretation of his character, but it’s the way I approach him whenever I’m writing, and I hope people find it helpful.
This is a lot more in-depth than my other post, so this will be more like a DND-style character sheet for him lol. I’ll go into his general outlook/worldview, mannerisms & temperament, how he talks and thinks, etc, along with some other stuff like his dynamic with Grogu.
As always, this is all going under a cut ↴
Keep reading
questions about the children of the watch:
why do they never speak in mando’a?
why are they the only type of mandalorian that the average person has heard of?
how are they connected to death watch?
if they’re a split-off group from death watch, how did they transform from a terrorist group into a religion?
and how did it go from a race to a creed?
why doesn’t din recognize bo-katan’s name or know what the darksaber is?
do the other members of din’s tribe know as little about mandalorian history as he does? if not, are they intentionally concealing information from him? and if so, is that unique to him or something that happens to all foundlings?
is “the watch” death watch, or is it something else?
how many coverts are there?
what are the specific tenets of the way?
when were the children of the watch founded?
are there children of the watch who actually call themselves that, or is it a term only used by non-believers?
food for thought.
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.
I think both the show and Din himself associates removing his helmet with death. maybe not always literal death (in ch8 he would rather die with his helmet on than live and take it off), but there’s a sense that he would meet a permanent and irrevocable spiritual end of some kind, something he won’t be allowed to come back from. I think in his mind he pictures it as a singularly traumatic event where nothing that happens after will matter, because whether he lives or dies, he won’t be a Mandalorian any longer. This would be the bookend moment to losing his parents as a child, which is the day he STARTED being a Mandalorian. It’s a very cinematic, very easy way of thinking about his life.
But that doesn’t happen! IG-11 removes his helmet and he has to keep on living as a Mandalorian. That transgression is a bit easier to rationalise if he’s being incredibly literal about the Creed (IG isn’t technically “a living thing”, as he says), which I don’t think Din is normally prone to doing, but it’s enough to keep the panic about losing his identity under control. In ch15 though, he shows his face to a bunch of Imperials and then has to put his helmet back on and keep being a Mandalorian, which would normally be a plain and simple End Of My Life event. but in that moment he puts his helmet back on anyway and keeps fighting, because being a Mandalorian means protecting the kid more than it means hiding himself from other people.
The common interpretation I see of this sequence of events is that Din is learning there’s more than one way of being a Mando, reinforced by his contact with Bo and Boba. And I suppose you can make that case, but for me personally I think it’s much more interesting to understand it as Din having to confront a deep contradiction in his own beliefs, which is whether to prioritise his armour and his own self, or his duty to those he loves. Din’s ties to his mando-hood have always been based in his larger community, but in the show itself he’s framed as a perpetual loner, a singular individual unit in a vast galaxy that is unconcerned with his well-being or his beliefs. And Grogu is presented as the first time he has to confront the idea that he is more than himself and his responsibilities, that he has to take care of himself for other people, and that his principles need to accommodate for that shift in priorities. It doesn’t mean he suddenly has this moment of clarity where he thinks “oh god, I’ve been living by this set of rules my entire life and they don’t actually matter”; it’s moreso “I am finally in a place in my life where I have to make real compromises, and I would rather compromise my own personal safety and comfort than my relationship with my own son.”
Which is such a great arc for him to go through!!!! It isn’t a phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes moment, nor a ledge-i-can’t-come-back-from moment. It’s a continual and subtle shift in his beliefs that he has to consciously attend to and confront every single day. Din has to practice being a Mandalorian for Grogu, which is different from being a Mandalorian for himself or his covert.