Just A Normal Day At The Normal Office Where Everything Is Normal Always

yes there's a lot of things to criticize about Star Wars but one thing i will always love it for is being so unabashedly tragic

i'm sure it's been said before, but one of the main things i think powers the SW fandom (fics in particular) is the (in)evitability of it all

time travel fix-its are one of the most popular sub-categories of fics that i've seen (for the prequels at least) but i see it much more rarely in other fandoms. i know each fandom has their own niches that they dig into but star wars fic writers took one look at this decades long story of people who were doomed from the start and said 'not in my house bitch'

and i'm never tired of it, because there's so many places where just one different action could have changed the story entirely, but didn't

was it over the moment Palpatine succeeded in feeding Anakin's fears and his distrust toward the Jedi? the moment the Sith gained control of the senate? what about when the war started, when the Jedi were made generals of men designed to be their executioners? what about when Dooku left the order? when Qui-Gon Jinn died, leaving barely-knighted Obi Wan Kenobi to raise a child he had no idea how to care for? when the Jedi massacred the Mandalorians at Galidraan, leaving Jango Fett primed (hah) for revenge? when Palpatine, and thus the Sith, first gained influence? when the Jedi were tied to the Republic, all the way back at the Ruusan Reformation?

there are so many little moments that turn into this huge web of cause and effect when you take a step back. and in canon, these characters are dooming themselves while we watch, but what reason do they have to do anything different? they don't know they're in a tragedy - its dramatic irony at its goddamn finest

but there's this thing about decisions: for it to be a choice, there has to be another option. and our heroes make their mistakes because that's what they do, while we aren't privy to that other option, leaving that little what-if. it's a favorite human pastime, to think about what might have been.

we start at episode 4, though, fourty or so years after what you could arguably call the start, and find ourselves watching the dominoes fall in place throughout 1, 2, and 3.

and we can hate the choices, hate the tragedy, hate what happened to our beloved characters, but we knew. we had the luxury of knowing.

it's a love story, it's political intrique, it's sci-fi at its finest, and they were dead from the start.

Any guy can be a babygirl but it takes a man five elite clone commandos to be a single mother

"Luke Skywalker isn’t like the old Jedi. He saves Vader with his attachments!”

Wrong!

Luke Skywalker, at the end of Return of the Jedi, after his confrontation with the Emperor drags Darth Vader through the destructing Death Star. He’s desperate, knuckles white under the heavy weight of his father’s body, a little boy dragging his dad to safety. He sets Vader down for a moment, to catch his breath or maybe to get a better grip. He goes to grab Vader again, but Vader, uncomfortable and in pain, asks Luke to take off the mask. He wants to see Luke through his eyes instead of the eyes Palpatine built for him. Luke refuses, says that removing the mask is a sure way for Vader to die. Luke doesn’t want Vader dead, he wants Vader alive. Not to hold him accountable for his many evil acts, but for the same reason why Luke Skywalker can’t kill Darth Vader; Vader is his father and Luke loves him.

And yet, after a moment, Luke removes Vader’s mask. He doesn’t want to, he hesitates, but he removes the mask with enough slowness to allow Vader to take it back. In that moment, Luke sets aside his desire for Vader in his life, sets aside his desire to see him live, and sets aside his entire mission, the reason he was even on the Death Star in the place. In his compassion for his father, Luke stays with Vader until he dies. It is this moment where we see him be the best damn Jedi he can be. I’d even argue that this moment is the greatest example of non-attached love we see. Because Luke lets Vader go! He lets his father die, and in some ways, by removing the mask, he too kills Vader, he stays with him until his last moment, gives him the kindness of granting his last wish and finally chooses Vader.

And Luke doesn’t have to do this. If Luke Skywalker’s love for his father was an attachment, he would ignore Vader and continue dragging him to the escape pod, put his desire for a father as his central focus and ignore Vader’s wants and discomfort. Maybe he would even save him. But he doesn’t. Instead, he watches as Vader dies.

He builds a Jedi burial for his father and watches it burn the remnants of Vader and Anakin Skywalker away. He mourns Vader, he mourns what they could’ve had as father and son, considers what ifs and maybe-if-I-did-this. Vader/ Anakin is released from his mortal body, from his ‘crude matter’ and Luke lets him go. He says one final goodbye to Anakin. Then, he joins Leia, Han, Chewie, Lando, and the rest of the Rebels and celebrates their victory. He lives in the present and celebrates what he has instead of what he lost.

Luke Skywalker is THE Jedi. Everything about Luke Skywalker serves as the foundational cornerstone of the Jedi, everything about the Jedi as a culture and philosophy is reflected in his character. Luke’s desire for the New Jedi Order isn’t to throw away the values of the old Order, but to vitalise them, breathe life back into dying lungs, and rebuild a path that people set out on their way to destroy. (Yes, his Order is different from the Old, but that’s because it has to be. He doesn’t have the resources or the safety of the Old Order.) The philosophies of the Jedi are difficult and they aren’t for everyone, and like the perfect Jedi that Luke is, he struggles and stumbles and sometimes he even rejects it. But, no matter how far he falls, it is a way of life he chooses again and again and again. It is a way of life that welcomes him back each time

Shit writing Saturday <3

Haven’t done one of these in a while! To be fair… haven’t written smth I was excited to share in a while. Here’s this!! Lmk what you think 🥰🥰

Cody continues to stare, unseeing, out the viewport.

“I don’t know these stars,” he murmurs finally.

Kenobi says nothing. Cody knows he’s listening all the same.

“When I… grew up, on Kamino. There were rare cloudless nights. The seas would still for maybe only a few hours at a time, and the clouds would part around these brilliant points of light in a pitch black sky.”

He closes his eyes. He can just about see it; the rain-slicked platform, the cadets all hushing each other as they hurried outside, hoping no longnecks would catch them, no trainers would see them. Hoping that Fett himself was asleep, that his own cadet had been enough of a handful that day that Fett wouldn’t catch them either, all of them breaking rules.

“We would find our way around the biggest stars, first. The brightest. The ones that were always there. Those were our trainers. The guiding stars to direct us to where we needed to look. And then… we started naming the other stars. And we named them after ourselves. After each other. Our batchers, our squaddies, anyone. There were so many stars in the sky… but there were so many of us, too, what felt like enough to give each of those stars a name. The command formation has me, Bly, Fox, Wolffe, and Ponds, about two fingers’ width up from the star that was Alpha-17.

“Each of those names on that report—” Strato. Pusher. Scald. Cinder. Fuck, he knew where each of their stars was.

His eyes snap open again. Unfamiliar stars fall past him. It’s a cold sort of comfort, to distance himself from the urge to scream that rises in his throat.

“Cody,” Kenobi whispers, near silent.

He drops his forehead to his knees. “A swath of the sky has gone dark,” he replies. “And there’s nothing I can do.”

It's like angel and demon on her shoulders, but they are her birth parents.

What Is Star Wars To You?

Hey, everybody!!!! I'm working on a rewrite of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, and I'm trying to get lots of people's thoughts on what Star Wars is to them and what really makes Star Wars *Star Wars*, ya know?

I'm really curious, because for me, most of Disney's Star Wars content has really just not felt like Star Wars. I really did not like the sequel trilogy or most of the live action shows, but I absolutely adore TCW, TBB, and Andor, because they all really hit whatever it is that is Star Wars to me.

Anyway, I would love to hear your thoughts!! Also, no hate to anyone who does love the sequel trilogy or other Disney Star Wars content, I would love to hear what it is about it that makes you love it and makes it feel like Star Wars to you!

WORLDBUILDING RULE NUMBER ONE: PUT A FUCKING EQUATOR IN YOUR WORLD MAP

WORLDBUILDING RULE NUMBER TWO: IF THERE ARE POTATOES IN YOUR WORLD THERE MUST BE AN ANDES FROM WHERE THEY CAME FROM

WORLDBUILDING RULE NUMBER THREE: PUT. A. FUCKING. EQUATOR. IN. YOUR. WORLD. MAP.

WORLDBUILDING RULE NUMBER FOUR: ANY PLACE SOUTH OF THE EQUATOR CAN AND MUST BE AN ARGENTINA EQUIVALENT

Rex: If this plan goes down the drain, where should we regroup? Anakin: The afterlife, I guess.

Image description: It's a drawing of a very young Ahsoka Tano. She's on her knees in front of a Clone Trooper's helmet. She's crying and her hands are tight fists on her lap. She's wearing a light blue Jedi robe with brown gloves and boots. The Clone helmet insta drawn in like her, it's left as a light colored sketch. The prompt for this drawing was the theme of "absence" and Ahsoka's first time mourning one of her fellow soldiers. End of description.