Unpopular opinion: I know that a lot of Star Wars fans are peeved about the tragedy of the sequels negating much of the happy ending of the original trilogy, but honestly, that's actually one of my favorite parts of the sequels. Why? Because it means that well-intentioned hypocritical nutheads like Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Bail Organa don't get to get away with underhanded, morally unethical stunts like separating the twins from each other, kidnapping them from their biological families, lying to them about their heritage, grooming them against their own father, and using them to try to restore their own power and get everything back to the old status quo that got them into this mess in the first place. We all get to see the consequences of such tactics and nobody (who's paying attention) gets to say that "this and that" was okay because everything turned out fine in the end.

Because even though Luke managed to break the cycle of darkness and abuse on his end by the end of the original trilogy, we never really saw that happening with Leia on her end, nor did we see many of those family issues from that separation and manipulation or many of the problems with the Old Jedi Order or any of the problems with the Old Republic get even addressed. Many of the underlying issues of the prequels that came from people not learning from their mistakes just got swept under the rug. At least with the tragic events that happened in the sequel era (at least in TFA, before Lucasfilm messed everything up in the subsequent sequels, which I don't count as canon), we get to see many of the effects of such corrupt and dysfunctional methods that these "heroic" elders used, and in some way, there's some poetic justice in that, even at such a high price. And I know that many of you are saying that "Star Wars is supposed to be a fairy tale or myth; it's not supposed to be realistic", but let me remind you that not every fairy tale has gotten a happily ever after (at least in its early versions) and it was actually quite rare for mythological heroes to get a happily ever after either.

Disclaimer: This is mostly about TFA, which was much more consistent with the original lore. I acknowledge that the later two sequels didn't have as much consistency or respect for the original lore (or even with TFA), so I don't count them as canon.

Okay but curiosity question. How do you think Padme would feel about how Yoda and Kenobi dealt with the fate of the Twins? I know sometimes it’s talked about jokingly but there are times I truly wonder what her reaction would be.

While she did still love Anakin and believe that there was still good in him, I also think she would completely understand where Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, and Bail Organa were coming from in wanting to keep them away from her husband, so long as he was embracing the dark side.

However, I think she would feel pretty pissed off with Obi-Wan Kenobi for chopping off Anakin’s limbs, leaving him to burn alive on Mustafar. I think she would be pissed off with Obi-Wan for continuing to egg Anakin on into a duel on Mustafar when he still actually offered his old master an opportunity to back off from a fight with him. I’m not saying that Anakin was wholly innocent. I’m not saying that he didn’t deserve to be stopped and punished for his crimes against the Republic at all, nor am I saying that Obi-Wan didn’t have good reason to feel angry and wary of trusting him at that point.

However, the Anakin on Mustafar also was clearly not in a healthy state of mind at all, he was not the first Jedi of his time to go dark, and Obi-Wan and the Council of elders responsible for guardianship, mentorship, and training were awful friends, role models, and support systems who were not “all so above it” as they claimed they were anymore either.

They were self-serving and elitist moral hypocrites. The Council recruited force sensitive children as soldiers to serve their corrupt government and quest to destroy the Sith under very dubious consent issues. They isolated these kids from their family and friends on the outside after recruiting them, which is incredibly cult-like. They weren’t really giving these kids and parents a fully honest explanation of what they were signing these kids up for. Not to mention the fact that Anakin came from slavery on a planet with his mom that their Republic and Jedi did nothing to help because doing so didn’t benefit their “greater good.” They repeatedly fucked over their recruits, particularly Anakin, for their own benefits of “the greater good” by belittling them, dismissing them, emotionally abusing /neglecting them, endangering them, exploiting them, gaslighting them, isolating them, and selling them out in the Jedi Order.

I don’t think it’s fair to say that the Jedi masters and Council who raised the kids that went dark are entirely to blame for every crime their charges grew up to commit, nor did the entire Order and Republic deserve mass murder and Order 66. However, the bottom line is that Anakin Skywalker was a normal good little boy in The Phantom Menace when we first see him living under physically worse conditions with just one genuinely good guardian in his mother before the Jedi came along. Then, he’s separated from her, broken down, and trained as a child soldier for the corrupt Republic’s bizarre and dangerous state-sanctioned military cult. Yoda implements a system that involves treating his own recruits like slave weapons for their own ends. The clones are commissioned to Yoda as a slave army by Palpatine. He, Mace, and the rest of the Council don’t really seem to care.

The people on Anakin’s home planet, the outer rims, and the Republic’s own working class don’t really get any of the “democracy” and “peace” they claim to stand for because the elites feel it’s too risky for their public reputation and Yoda is so exceedingly paranoid about the dark side that he refuses to let his recruits have fair agency and be human.

You have the fact that the adult members involved in the Republic and Jedi of the prequels were already displaying traits of a watered down Empire, even before Palpatine got into the Senate as Chancellor. They created a lot of collateral damage for their own ends, particularly in the clone wars, and they were getting to the point where they were no longer to caring about the negative consequences because they weren’t usually so severe that they couldn’t easily recover from them afterwards until Order 66.

The fact that many of the Jedi adults with positions of authority in the Order and Republic only started seriously caring about horrific shit happening in the galaxy when it started negatively affecting them and their ability to hold onto their power, positions, public reputations, and safety after three years as soldiers in to the clone wars and thirteen-fourteen years of allowing for Palpatine to stay in power as Chancellor by Revenge of the Sith, really shows just how apathetic, hypocritical, and self-centered how many of them had become.

Again, I’m not saying Anakin is wholly innocent. I know he had a conscience, and didn’t commit every crime he did at the prompting of Sidious and the Jedi Council, in spite of the odds against him, so he does hold some responsibility for his own bad decisions, too. I’m not saying the entire Order and Republic deserved mass murder in response.

However, when the abuse, crime, classism, hypocrisy, and oppression is a widespread systematic issue under an elitist government and their military state-sanctioned soldier cult from which there are no means of healthy support or safe escape from these abusive, corrupt, deceitful, hypocritical, isolating, manipulative, and negligent authority figures and guardians within it, you do have to place at least part of the blame on those in charge of raising the people involved in them if they cracked under pressure in the constant circumstances of abuse, grooming, and oppression in those systems and grew up to be deeply damaged, dangerous, dysfunctional, and unstable human disasters when they couldn’t find any fair agency, healthy support, or safe escape from it. You have to acknowledge that there would have been a far better chance for Anakin Skywalker to have grown up to consistently remain that good little boy he once was on Tatooine if he’d had his mother to raise him, the adults who raised him in the Jedi hadn’t already sucked so much themselves, and/or Palpatine hadn’t been allowed to have access to him alone from the time he was a child.

So yeah, I think Padme would be upset with Obi-Wan and Yoda for immediately throwing accusations at her husband for being so terrible that he needed to be immediately executed by them upon seeing him after finding out he went dark, rather than trying to talk to him on Mustafar, asking him why he did it, and honestly owning up to their own part in Anakin’s fall first before going straight to treating him as an irredeemable monster with no hope. Yes, Obi-Wan and Yoda acknowledge that they failed Anakin in Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan even tells him to his face, but their blindsided defenses in regards to the Jedi code, hypocrisy, lifestyle, and excessive hostility and urgency in regards to executing Anakin and their other recruits for their crimes the minute they find out they turned on their Order and Republic without asking any further questions about why they did in the first place and/or allowing for them to have a fair legal defense trial first, proves that they lack the empathy, experience, patience, open-mindedness, and self-awareness to truly understand why they screwed up.

I think she would also feel pretty pissed off with Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Bail Organa for separating Luke and Leia from each other, and for keeping both her’s and Anakin’s other relatives out of the loop of what happened to their daughter, their son-in-law, their stepbrother, their grandchildren, their niece, and their nephew.

I think she would be upset that Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Bail Organa deliberately withheld the truth from Luke and Leia about their biological family for twenty something years.

I think she would feel pretty pissed off with Obi-Wan Kenobi for stealing Anakin’s lightsaber, for giving it to Luke to train him to kill his father that their system helped fucked up and drive away, and for lying to Luke about his father with Yoda to try to get him to do that.

I think Padme would actually have issues with the way that Bail Organa was fighting to rebuild the Republic with all the same problems as the old one. I think she would feel upset that Bail was teaching her daughter to rebuild a Republic with all the same issues she was finally realizing existed in the one she supported her whole life by Revenge of the Sith that were not just the fault of Palpatine and the Sith.

If you guys want to comment, you can!

@tragicfantasy-girl

@riana-one

@rogue205

@the-chosen-anakin

Another Rant… (and my own opinion)

Okay so why are people out here now using the Organas to try and shoot down the Skywalkers as parents? The very same Organas who, if you want to get technical (which haters refuse to do), kidnapped the Skywalkers’ baby daughter because they couldn’t have one of their own and kept her existence a secret from her real family? A baby Bail also had no right to make decisions about. But he’s rich and well-known so it’s okay, I guess.

In case y’all haters also forgot, Anakin and Padme never GOT to be parents so where the hell is all this “proof” coming from. 🙄🤦‍♀️ TCW I suppose which basically did it’s best to destroy the love that Anakin and Padme shared and that was evident in the movies. Anakin’s reaction to Clovis putting the (unwanted) moves on Padme seem to be a particular favorite for the haters to use but seriously. Anakin freaking walked in on a man trying to force himself on Anakin’s wife! How the hell do you expect him to react?! Somehow, CLOVIS still has the support. Which, ooooooookay.

All we really know is that both Anakin and Padme loved their child(ren) from the very second they knew she was pregnant and Padme was already making plans to raise them on Naboo at the Lake House while Anakin was fully planning on leaving the Order so he could be with them after the war. He chose his family over the Jedi because he was also tired of the shit treatment he was constantly being subjected to.

But sure, they’re the worst of the two options.

No Order 66 AU where Anakin leaves the Order after the war ends and he and Padme end up retiring to Naboo to try to raise the twins together, but neither of them ends up feeling particularly satisfied with life on Naboo (for Anakin it just doesn't give him any purpose the way he desperately needs and for Padme it's always been this perfect rosy dream and reality doesn't measure up), so they end up leaving the twins behind a lot so they can pursue other things and are pretty absentee parents in general. They mostly end up getting raised by Padme's parents instead, and while they're perfectly good guardians for the twins and raise them kindly and love them a lot, there's always an obvious elephant in the room regarding who ISN'T there.

This causes a bit of a rift between Luke and Leia because while Luke is trying to keep the peace and give their parents the benefit of the doubt as he moves on and figures out his own life with what he DOES have, Leia is less willing to just forgive and forget.

Luke ends up becoming a pilot working for the royal palace for a while, but Leia goes into politics (something she'd entered while younger because it's what her mother did and she'd been hoping it would get Padme's attention and bring the two of them closer; it didn't work out that way at all and now Leia's sticking with it at least partly to spite Padme) as an aide for her cousin Pooja who is now Senator of Naboo.

And it's here, once she finally makes it to Coruscant and starts working in the Senate, that Leia meets Bail Organa, still working as Senator of Alderaan. The two of them click IMMEDIATELY and Bail ends up becoming Leia's mentor in politics, as well as the person who actually introduces her to the Jedi themselves. Anakin and Padme had never really bothered to do so, both because they were so rarely around, but also because they had chosen not to give Luke and Leia to the Temple and decided at that point that it would be easier to keep the twins and the Jedi separate. Bail of course has no such compunctions and even if he knew about Anakin and Padme's feelings on the matter, I imagine he'd find ways to allow Leia to accidentally bump into some of the Jedi while she was on Coruscant. If he just so happens to double book himself for lunch with both Leia and Obi-Wan, it's hardly anything malicious and they may as well all eat together!

Leia finally feels like she has a parent who gives a damn about her, someone who acts like a parent to her, the parent she's always wanted. Her grandparents had always been incredibly kind and they obviously had to do a lot of parenting, but they'd always been very strict about making sure the twins saw them as GRANDPARENTS and not their actual parents, which just make the absence of their parents that much more obvious and painful. But with Bail, she's finally got someone who doesn't care that Anakin and Padme aren't there and doesn't feel the need to create a wall between them for Anakin and Padme's sake. Bail takes her under his wing, teaches her everything she knows, allows her to explore things she'd never been allowed to explore before, connects her to even more people who can help her understand herself better than she's ever been able to before. THIS is what a parent was supposed to do for her and she knows it, THIS is what selfless love looks like from a parent and she THRIVES under it for the first time in her life.

She eventually decides not to stay on as Pooja's aide because she has no real desire to become a senator for Naboo at any point, but she IS good at politics and desperately does want to help people any way she can, so she starts up some sort of organization of her own to help people around the galaxy (and connects it to the Jedi because deep down she KNOWS she was supposed to be one of them even though that path is now closed to her). But she doesn't go back to Naboo, she doesn't make her home on her mother's home planet.

She goes to Alderaan instead. And this time, she gets to stay there for the rest of her life.

i don't think we talk enough about bail wearing a leather jacket and globes, for real, this man is gorgeous

Sometimes I think about how deeply loved and wanted Luke and Leia ultimately were by all of their parents; Anakin, Padme, Breha, Bail, Beru and Owen and I just want to throw myself into the sun.

In some form or another each of them risked their lives for those children at some point. They didn’t have to. Anakin and Padme didn’t have to keep the pregnancy. Bail and Breha and Beru and Owen didn’t have to take them in. Obi-Wan didn’t have to dedicate the rest of his life to keep them safe. Every single one of them either the last thing they did, the last thing they thought about, or the last thing the saw was Luke and/or Leia.

So much of the Skywalker twins lives sucked but they were so, so loved by all their parents and I just 🥲🥲🥲

wookieepedia has two different pages for Bail Antilles and Bail Prestor Organa and I'm calling bullshit. there is no explanation other than he got married between tpm and aotc and took Breha's name.

Is it just me, or does Obi Wan Kenobi seem to get a free pass on a lot of unacceptable or dubious behaviour? Everything from disrespecting his superiors (he argues with Qui Gon in public in The Phantom Menace and he's quite rude to others), to outright war crimes in The Clone Wars series. All these seem to get either ignored or excused, when they wouldn't be for other characters. Any thoughts on this?

I've sat on this ask for so long trying to exactly articulate my thoughts on this. It's just so complicated. I mean, you're not wrong, but what I've come to conclude is that it often seems to matter which corner of fandom you spend most of your time in. It's not a one-size-fits-all, but I have noticed that pro-Jedi people tend to view Obi-Wan as their beloved. Meanwhile, the more Jedi critical crowd tend to be a lot more critical of Obi-Wan too. It depends on where you are looking.

I figure this makes sense. An important part of Obi-Wan's character is his deference, respect, and reverence for Yoda, the Council, and the Jedi Code. So, if you are pro-Jedi, you are naturally going to be more pro-Obi-Wan, aren't you? I find the horrible things the Jedi do are handwaved away by, "The Senate made them," "they were lied to," or "it was a rock-and-hard-place choice," and so on. The same logic gets applied to Obi-Wan. He is the victim. The Jedi are the victims. Therefore, they must be the good guys 100%, because they are targets by the bad guys. (The irony, of course, is that I think many of these arguments could be applied to Anakin. Literally everyone in the prequels is a victim of Palpatine in some way.) Conversely, people who are more Jedi critical tend to also be a bit more critical of Obi-Wan.

As a result, I cannot say that Obi-Wan does always get a free pass on his dubious behavior. It really depends on which corner of fandom you find yourself in.

I do scratch my head sometimes on why some people seem so rabidly pro-Jedi and almost seem to turn Obi-Wan into a saint. I think it is partially because this is what the narrative encourages, if you do not sit with it and think about the realistic implications. Even more so, if you are not a death of the author sort of person. I’ve noticed, in TCW especially, that they beat you over the head with Vader foreshadowing which is even unwarranted sometimes. But if all you’re listening to is the music, why would you think on that further?

Mind you, GL has made it clear that the Jedi were meant to have become stagnant. He wanted to show how we give away our democracies. He also wanted to show Anakin as a victim. I don't think we were ever supposed to consider them completely virtuous. However, GL also seems to have made it clear that he supports Jedi taking kids from their families and forbidding contact. He seems to support this toxic no attachment stuff. GL has also been dismissive, imho, of the legitimate trauma Anakin and the other Jedi kids went through. I'm of the opinion he needs to crack open a book on basic psychology. (Maybe one on philosophy too.) As a result, people can and do say that the Jedi did teach Anakin everything right and he just didn't listen, and since Obi-Wan is the obvious teacher here...

Then, there is the simple fact that since Anakin becomes Darth Vader some people think that sympathizing with him, (and the pain he experienced under Obi-Wan's tutelage) means you somehow condone what he does. It doesn't. Thus, Obi-Wan becomes the poor victim. Fandom sometimes thinks it is wrong to criticize characters they see as victims, same as they do not like to say a villain is sympathetic.

Since, Anakin and Obi-Wan are narrative foils in many respects, I guess it sort of becomes natural to make Obi-Wan the saint and Anakin the sinner. Obi-Wan and Anakin become pitted against each other narratively, and I guess in fandom it has messily divided that way too.

It's complicated. *shrug*

Being a pro-Jedi fan is super hard.

Stumbled upon a scientific paper ‘The Psychgeist of Pop Culture’ (2024) about ‘The Mandalorian’ and ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ series. It’s divided into many smaller research by various PhDs. The Boba chapters are actually very good.

And then there’s ‘Fatherhood and male emotions’ chapter. About Jedi. About attachment. The authors Keely Diebold and Meghan Sander, PhDs, are claimed as Jedi fans.

Good start. / s Bad enough Din Djarin is called ‘Djarin’ as a name throughout the whole paper (my own pet peeve about the dick move of Favreau and Filoni in the end of Season 3 which is a decision to criticize in itself). Of course, Obi-Wan wasn’t a ‘good father figure’ as claimed by Lucas himself. Neither was Bail Organa. /s

Yeah. Hypocrisy. Hey, ‘Jedi fans authors’, have you actually watched the movies? Sigh. Seriously, ‘the intergalactic therapists’ who were trying to help Anakin to cope with his emotions so much, working with ‘cognitive therapy’ – they suppressed emotions. I just… don’t have any coherent thoughts about that bullshit on the screencap. And – now we defend Palpatine. Just great.

By the way, rewatching Indiana Jones movies, I paid special attention to the moments when someone of the team is left behind and the main characters continue chasing the enemies (just like in the mentioned scene in AOTC). And it’s never presented as ‘left behind and forgotten, heroes don’t care about them’.

What is evident to me is that this all is a piece of banthashit. Mandos with the suppression of emotions – I agree. Jedi? When one of their main proverbs ‘feel, don’t think’?

‘His own interpretation’? It’s not! Why did the authors decide that’s what happened? The point is that Anakin is taught ‘compassion, which … [is] unconditional love, is central to a Jedi’s life. … we are encouraged to love’ by the Jedi, but acts in the way he wants regardless. Screams in the plush Grogu How do people manage to watch obvious in messaging children films with their ass holes?

Frankly, I suspect that these ‘Jedi-fans’ authors just don’t understand and didn’t even try to explore the meaning of ‘attachment’ in Star Wars – it’s not ‘a deep and enduring emotional bond that connects one person to another’, it’s ‘selfishness’. They never tried to google Lucas’s interviews, but only used books about child rearing. This is why we have all this crap in a ‘scientific paper’. I firmly believe that @david-talks-sw, @writerbuddha, @kanansdume, @antianakin, @smhalltheurlsaretaken and other fans could write a whole paper about Jedi and attachments – and this would be real in-depth analysis of the Jedi and Star Wars.

And a rotten cherry on the top of this shitcake I noticed just before publishing – using ScreenRant as a reference not the smartest move, really.

Now how can a reader trust your judgment if you use fucking ScreenRant as a proof? Ah, no, they cannot (see this whole post).

@fanfic-lover-girl

Yeah, that coward OP blocked me for criticizing their precious Bail Organa on their post, so I'm going to have to say it here:

I disagree with there being necessarily nothing wrong with taking advantage of an opportunity. It is wrong when that opportunity comes from someone else's misfortune and you take advantage of that misfortune instead of helping to alleviate it as much as possible. That baby girl's family was being torn apart and instead of helping to keep it together, Bail took advantage of the opportunity for a child to claim as his own and scavenged her from them. That's quite covetous, callous, and cruel, and that's the problem with so many adoptive parents, which is why the adoption system is so corrupt. As for not considering all the factors, Bail Organa was an experienced politician in the middle of a crisis who held the fate of an entire planet in his hands. He should have considered all of those risks to his nation and his family before making such a stupid decision. Like you said, that makes him a bad leader that he was willing to endanger his planet like that.

But you're right about everything else, though.

@tragicfantasy-girl

@praetor-canis

@gch1995

@wingletblackbird

@redrikki

@rogue205

@allronix

@cptsd-skywalker

@the-chosen-anakin

@leias-left-hair-bun-again

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@skyguy8108

@thatonecrazyfan

@avayarising

@alyraa-undomiel

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@kit-kat-of-midgard

@stuckylokanefan

@mynameisanakin

Hot Take: Leia wasn't adopted. She was abducted even if Bail and Breha loved her to pieces, they had no moral or ethical authority to take her. Padme didn't give any permission to take her babies. Anakin was BBQ, but the next in line to take the twins were their extended family. The Larses got Luke but weren't told about Leia. The Naberries got the body of their daughter/sister/aunt back but not her kids???

| Strongly Agree | Agree | Strongly Disagree | Disagree |

On the one hand, I can completely understand that Palpatine was a monster who would stop at nothing to capture the twins, harm them, and try to turn them to the dark side.

As for Anakin, I know he wouldn’t feel content or happy harming or murdering his own kids if he knew who they were, even on the high of the dark side in that suit. We see that as much in his interactions with Luke in the OT movies after he finds out he is his son. However, he also was a dangerous and unfit parent at that point too because he was high on the power of the dark side, he had a hair trigger temper that he was now regularly using as a weapon when pushed by others getting in his or the Emperor’s way on this new power, and he’d become very emotionally/mentally unstable after being groomed and manipulated to be an obedient weapon and tool in slavery and two space soldier cults for the ends of corrupt authority figures involved in both of them from the time he was a child. He’d need to get out of battle and the Sith altogether, and put in to intense rehab therapy before getting trusted with children again. Thus, I can completely understand why Bail Organa, Obi-Wan, and Yoda would keep the truth of the twins existence away from Anakin after realizing he was still alive.

The ways in which Bail Organa, Obi-Wan, and Yoda went about dealing with the twins after they were born and Padme died, were selfish, unethical, and unfair, though. They deliberately decide to keep Padme’s remaining family entirely out of the loop, and Obi-Wan and Yoda deliberately keep Anakin’s remaining step-relatives half out of the loop. Bail Organa, Obi-Wan, and Yoda all would know the Naberrie family, and they still decides to keep her remaining family completely out of the loop in regards to their grandchildren, niece, and nephew. Bail Organa takes on Leia without telling Padme’s remaining family the truth because his wife has fertility issues, and they “always wanted a little girl.” Obi-Wan and Yoda only hand over Luke and Leia to the Larses and Organas under the condition that they be trained as Jedi “when the time comes.”

It’s not like Obi-Wan and Yoda are really doing this for Luke and Leia completely out of the kindness of their hearts. They’re also doing it because the Jedi are considered criminals under the law of Palpatine with the Empire now and can’t be discovered. Trying to hide powerful force-sensitive infants would make them more vulnerable to discovery as Jedi themselves without a temple to hide in or a galactic government to back them up with support.

While I don’t think that Bail ever meant for any harm to come to Leia, nor do I think he was wrong to come up with the Rebellion, I also do think he was rather arrogant, naive, and selfish, even if not consciously. He takes on a baby of his old friend after she dies and her husband has fallen from grace and lost his mind. He brings the baby to raise on the core planet of Alderaan that’s right next door to Palpatine and the Empire, bans weapons on Alderaan, let’s her speak alone with Vader and Palpatine, raises Leia on stories of how “great” the old Republic was just because it was somewhat better than the Empire that he benefitted from as an elite at the expense of those in the outer rims and working class, and deliberately decides to never tell Leia the truth about her biological family.

For what it’s worth, I really don’t think Bail Organa was intentionally malicious or manipulative in regards to Leia or those below him. I just think he was one of those blindly arrogant, ignorant, and self-centered elites from the broken Republic who was too afraid to lose his power in it to actually push to make a difference for those under him until it was abruptly taken away in a way that was far worse than anyone deserved. I think he was blinded by his privilege and hung out with people who were blinded by their own in the Republic. Padme started to get it because of Anakin, but even she struggled.

He became determined to rebuild the Republic system by creating the Rebellion to take down the Empire, which to be fair, was objectively worse, but he lacks the empathy and self-awareness to fully acknowledge why so many people came to hate the old Republic in the first place. He’s convinced himself it’s all on Sidious and the Empire, but never really understand why the working class and outer rims came to resent the old Republic because he came from a place of privilege within it that only ever benefitted him and those he was closest too. Unfortunately, but not unsurprisingly, he passed on a similar mindset to Leia in regards to the old Republic as a result.

The things they actually let happened in Kenobi

A ten-year-old girl sassing Obi-wan's ass off and nearly giving him a mental breakdown after meeting for 5 minutes

Some bitchy jedi refusing to talk to his apprentice for a decade

Obi-wan burying his and Anakin's "lives" together in a coffin for a decade in the middle of the desert on Anakin's home planet

Obi-wan hallucinating his ex-now-enemy

Obi-wan and Anakin having a force bond that's strong enough to reconnect at a single thought after a decade across the entire kriffing galaxy

The third sister doing impressive yet absolutely unnecessary complicated acrobatics on her way to hunt Obi-wan

A Child's body in ember

The Empire having a torture device (that looks suspiciously like a bdsm machine) in the middle of a huge room with several linked corridors

The Empire putting windows along a corridor under the ocean

A critical Empire building without any kind of air defense

Bail Organa spelling out the location of Vader's son's hiding place over an unsecured comm

A ten-year-old and a man in his forties believing they were taking care of the other

Everyone believing someone with magnets is a real jedi because jedis are so mysterious no one has any idea about their oisk

Obi-wan trying to negotiate with a Jawa

Darth Vader abandoning what's possibly the center hope of future rebellion over a single jedi and refusing to listen to advice

Duels that supply my mental breakdown material for 5 years

Vaderkin regretting the instant he started dragging Obi-wan over a fire for just a little bit after 10 years of immense hatred toward him

Also Vaderkin joining the Obi-wan Obsession Group and kept chasing his ass once he knew where Obi-wan was

Two men fighting each other by throwing rocks, which ends up with one of them crying and the other immediately freaking out

Vaderkin not saying "I have the highgroud" back

It's really hilarious to see Obitine listed as one of the "healthy" ships in Star Wars along with such glowing examples as Kanan and Hera and Bail and Breha just because Obitine happen to not have a big age gap when Obitine is honestly one of the least healthy ships in Star Wars and the only reason it's not at the bottom with Anidala is because Satine and Obi-Wan actively choose not to be in a relationship canonically.

Nice reminder that Bail Organa is a Disney Prince and the best ✨

There is much speculation on the different outcomes if Anakin's Master had been Mace, Plo, Qui-Gon, etc etc. Or even if he had additional mentorship with any of them in addition to Obi-Wan.

Really?

I think Anakin would have benefited from Bail as his political, non-Jedi mentor. I think Anakin needed a fatherly figure who wasn't a Jedi to supplement his non-Jedi sense of self. Someone younger but kind, honest, earnest...

Someone everything Palpatine wasn't. Someone who knew how, or learned really quickly, how to validate the irrational vulnerabilities of young children. All the while still being someone who can say, "Yeah, Obi-Wan frustrates me, too. I don't always under the Jedi or their ways. But Obi-Wan does love you."

Then, after tucking young Anakin to bed, he can also reach around and tell Obi-Wan to cool his overly critical way of trying to mould Anakin into this concept of a perfect Jedi.

A young but older man who could laugh with Anakin and maybe even roll up his sleeves and go dumper diving with the young lad if that is what he needs to cool it. Bail was a bit of a quiet rebel, and that was part of why he could think through things.

I also imagine the occasional mothering Breha could have also supplemented Anakin.

There's no denying that I'm a firm believer that for Anakin's story to go differently, he would not be able to stay within the Order. However, he still needed to grow up there and gain the skillsets to be a Chosen One who could go out there and Free The Slaves. Bail could have been a much-needed voice of assurance that if (when) Anakin chose to leave the Order, he wouldn't be alone. Obi-Wan would probably be right behind him. But, hey...

So is Senator Organa, a real mentor and friend.

What would you say to people who think padawans are child soldiers trained for war ?

What other blogs (and I) have already said a bunch of times - that based on Lucas' canon (6 movies + TCW):

1) Jedi training was more focused on diplomacy and such before the war than it was on combat prowess, and you can see evidence of that in Ahsoka's ability to teach a course on politics to a bunch of Mandalorian kids who are her age or older and who are receiving what looks like top education (the Duchess' nephew/adopted son is one of them so it's clearly a good school) or in Obi-Wan's duties with Qui-Gon. Sure, they're ready to pull out the lightsabers at the drop of a hat, but they're both ambassadors, and they spend a lot of the movie trying to impress on people that they're really not meant to be soldiers. What they really do is protect Padmé and give her leverage with their involvement, but she's the one who has to ultimately confront the Trade Federation and force them to comply. There hadn't been a galactic-wide war in like a thousand year, ergo Jedi training was not tailored for war for about a thousand year. If anything, Geonosis showed the Padawans and the Knights and the Masters were absolutely not trained for war.

2) That even during the war, the grown-up Jedi are evidently doing their absolute best to take care of the Padawans. They pull Ahsoka from the front when she makes bad decisions (the Lightsaber Lost episode) and it's not like all the Masters we know about wouldn't immediately jump in front of a blaster bolt for their Padawans (which is what Depa or Jaro DO end up doing for their apprentices, btw). It's not like they could just leave all the teens at home (they likely would have all sneaked out to go fight along with the other Jedi anyway lmao) when there aren't enough Masters or Knights around in the Temple to protect them there either. It's not like they could just leave the Padawans in untrained limbo for the duration of the war - when training in the Force is crucial at formative ages. (Also, we actually do see younglings who are old enough to be Padawans but aren't fighting: the kids who got kidnapped and hunted for sport by Trandoshans. Meaning that a) the Padawans going to war really isn't a matter of the Jedi being happy to throw their kids at the enemy, or they'd have sent O-mer, Jinx and Kalifa too - it's a matter of students accompanying their teachers, because really what else are they gonna do? and b) that Force-sensitive kids are never safe from the perils of the war even if they don't fight in it - so again, might as well keep them within sight)

3) That if you make the argument that the Jedi use child soldiers, then Naboo and Alderaan are on the exact same level. But it's a really bad faith argument to pretend that Padmé's position in TPM was the movie wanting us to see the Naboo government as a messed up child soldier situation, or that Bail and Breha were irresponsible for allowing Leia to join the Rebellion at age 15. And if people agree to be consistent on that one (again, as silly as it is to condemn either the Organas or the Naberries) then the Jedi are by far the more responsible and healthy system. Padawans have the supernatural abilities to outsmart, outrun or outfight a lot of potential threats, including trained warriors or droids. They are not like kids from the rest of the Galaxy, nevermind like kids from the real world.

4) That Padawans fighting in the war wasn't really something we saw in the movies (except on Geonosis, but again they're woefully unprepared for it and they didn't expect that level of aggression on Dooku and the Seps' part). It was the product of the out-of-universe reasoning that if you're going to animate and produce shows for kids, they're going to wanna see kids. My younger brothers and cousins's favorite episodes are probably the younglings eps, because duh.

Ultimately, it all comes down to whether or not people are criticizing the worldbuilding (they can dismiss my first three arguments as not good enough and continue to think the Padawans' situation is messed up, it's totally fair) or are saying that the story itself was condemning the Jedi for 'using child soldiers', in which case I think it's completely unsupported by anything in the movies, shows, or behind-the-scene comments.