and he was Anakin. She could not prepare her heart for the storms that brewed in his. She could not follow him. She could barely reach out as he tore past her like a comet. She was not ready.
When they next met, he was Finn and she was Rey. This time, he is ready.
Got an app for baby mood boards. They’re not great, but they’re more than I could do ten minutes ago!
Based on a fan theory of reincarnation that I very much love, written by @lj-writes
The fanart of the Anidala forehead kiss in the first image is by @jekadoodles
I made this so it counts as art, right? This is still an art blog. I’m just doing my civic duty. Posting art… to my art blog. Definitely not a fandom blog….
I hope people know that Jango Fett is a native Mandalorian. His family, Clan Fett, has been on Mandalorian soil for literal millennia. He is literally a True Mandalorian.
The story of Anakin and Padme is tragic as shit. They had a 14 year long relationship. Friends, comrades, equals, lovers, and eventually married soon to be parents. They went through an entire war together side by side.
The relationship while beautiful while it lasted, ended horrifically. Seriously I wouldn’t wish this relationship on anyone because just how it ended.
Anakin and Padme can’t be compared to any other relationship because their relationship is too layered with complexity and horrifying events.
Palpatine had gone out of his way to twist Anakin’s mind and Anakin’s own fear of losing people like he did with Qui-Gon, his mother, and Ahsoka, really messed him up. He became a monster.
Maybe in the next life they’ll find each other, but their story is a tragic af one.
love love love how both obi-wan and anakin’s teaching style is Wildly Exaggerated Hypocrisy:
“anakin don’t be so dramatic,” obi-wan says, as he goes to fight ventress w. a rose between his teeth, “and stop losing yr lightsaber” as if he has not lost his lightsaber, 15 separate cloaks, his whole-ass patience, and his lightsaber again.
“ahsoka you really need to respect the council,” says anakin, while on his phone, dragging the council on his poorly-disguised ventblog that mace windu hate-reads with his wine before bed every night.
absolute hypocrite Bastards, i love them.
poorly-disguised ventblog that mace windu hate-reads with his wine before bed every night.
Prequel culture is so civilized
I always had Mace Windu as brandy man, but I guess I could see him with a glass of red wine.
Brandy is for the days when Anakin forgets to turn off his comlink and the entire council listens to him and Padme connect powerconverts
As the male leads of the sequel and prequel trilogies, respectively, Finn and Anakin Skywalker go through similar story beats. But what’s interesting is how those similarities are also framed as contrasts. It’s at the point where they seem to be Left-Handed Mirrors of each other.
Finn begins his story in the same place that Anakin ends his: turning against a fascist organization and the people who groomed them.
On the other end of that, it’s interesting that Anakin fell to the Dark Side at 23, while at that same age, Finn made the opposite choice to embrace the Light.
Both have slavery in their backgrounds. While Anakin was born into slavery and chose to leave his mother to become a Jedi, Finn was kidnapped from his family before he was old enough to remember them and forced to serve the First Order.
As part of their slave backgrounds, both men lose their true names. Finn was assigned the designation FN-2187 after being kidnapped and doesn’t seem to remember what his birth name is. Anakin was also assigned a new name, Darth Vader, by his master after pledging himself to Sideous. He is able to reclaim his family and identity right before his death. Hopefully, Finn will discover his identity, family, and name as well.
Finn and Anakin both formed attachments easily and strove to help others. During his training, Phasma tried to teach Finn that helping his fellow cadet, Slip, was wrong and that letting him fail would strengthen the First Order as a whole. Her efforts failed and Finn still instinctively rushes to the aid of those around him. Anakin was also criticized for trying to help individuals rather than focusing on the broad picture. In the now Legends Jedi Quest novels, he is specifically told that helping his fellow padawans Darra and Tru was a sign of shortcomings within him. In ROTS, Obi-Wan stops him from trying to help the clones who are struggling in the battle because they need to stick to their mission. With Finn, it is a villain trying to pressure him into becoming like her, while the ones telling Anakin he is wrong to care about others are meant to be heroic.
Both Finn and Anakin also fight powerful dark siders, K/lo and Dooku respectively, and fail in their first battle with them. They are also severely wounded before their ally jumps in to continue the fight. Hopefully, this parallel will continue with Finn defeating K/lo in their next film confrontation. Instead of being another step toward the Dark Side like it was with Anakin, it could be confirmation of his Force sensitivity or at least rededication to his path in the Light.
As part of their slave narratives, Finn and Anakin are also able to kill the people directly above them. The deaths are even similar with Phasma and Palpatine both dying after being cast down on space crafts that are being destroyed. But while Anakin died killing his master, Finn is able to stand triumphant over his dying overseer.
On that same note, both men attempt to sacrifice themselves for those they love. Anakin dies saving his son from Palpatine while Finn nearly dies trying to protect his friends in the Resistance from the First Order.
(2/2) Aang still held onto his love for Katara and they ended up
together. I’ve seen some people say that unlocking your seventh chakra
doesn’t actually mean letting go of your loved ones and stuff, that in
Aang’s case it’d mean not to prioritize his attachments over the world,
but if that’s true then a) you may call it a sacrifice, but considering
it didn’t affect Aang’s relationship with Katara at all, it certainly
doesn’t feel like one b) why did Pathik word things so poorly?
(3/3) He pretty much said “Forget about the person you love”. The more
analyses I read about that last scene in The Guru, the more contrived it
feels to me. What are your thoughts? P.S.: Just to clarify (‘cause I
was called an “Aang hater” when discussing this very same topic a few
weeks ago): I love Aang, as in, he might very well be my favourite
fictional character ever. I just want to get a better understanding of
what the writers were going for in the Book 2 finale.
Well, even though I had a reputation (and still might, for all I know) of holding the original AtLA cartoon up on a pedestal as perfect, I think the writing around this little subplot was actually pretty bad. There’s a lot going on in the finale to Book Earth, so it’s easy to miss the nuances of Aang’s “detachment” subplot. I was always under the impression that this specific subplot is resolved at the end of Book Earth, and wouldn’t continue into Book Fire (as it turned out no to), but I’ll admit that the path to that conclusion is very shaky.
And, on top of that, of the three characters who weigh in on the subject (the Guru, Aang, and Iroh) at least one of them is completely mistaken about the subject, and the cartoon doesn’t give us any clues as to who!
But let’s see if I can offer enough of an explanation to back up my reblog.
I think you’ve got it right, attachment =/= love. There’s also Aang’s personal history to consider: He was a young Airbender who was not deeply into his studies before his education was curtailed, and even beforehand the spiritual side of his training may have suffered from receiving Avatar training so intensively at a young age, which could have been another reason for his mentor’s unhappiness at Aang’s regimen. The guru may have assumed a higher level of knowledge than Aang actually had, thinking Aang was using the terms correctly, resulting in a misunderstanding.
I agree the whole arc was not a model of clarity, especially since Aang’s misunderstanding was a common one for the audience and should have been cleared up. This confusion may have contributed to some fans’ dissatisfaction with/misunderstanding of Aang’s arc and his romance with Katara.
Also are you finally admitting Yoda was full of crud
Yup, the Guru is shown as disappointed to find out that Aang doesn’t even know what a chakra is, and since Pathik is familiar with the Air Nomads, he clearly expected it to be part of Aang’s education.
I just wish the reply to Aang’s, “How could it be a bad thing that I feel an attachment to her?“ was at least some acknowledgement that love isn’t always an attachment. The basics of the conflict could have been preserved if the Guru simply didn’t think Aang was capable of loving without attachment, at his maturity level.
I could write a whole essay questioning when Yoda was wrong, the degrees of his various states of wrongness, and whether the storytellers believed him to be wrong at the time of production. It would be no more coherent than The Great Kataang Detachment.
No wonder Gyatso was so opposed to the way Aang was being trained, in their rush to make him battle-ready the monks weren’t even giving him the fundamentals he needed as the Avatar. There’s a slight callback here to Iroh emphasizing the basics to Zuko early in Book 1, and a clearer parallel with Katara warning Aang in Book 2 against taking shortcuts to get to the Avatar State.
I was surprised to find Attack of the Clones actually made the distinction between attachment and love through Anakin himself, of all people (audio clip):
“Attachment is forbidden.
Possession is forbidden.
Compassion, which I would define
as unconditional love…
is central
to a Jedi’s life.
So you might say that
we are encouraged to love.”
Much like ATLA, the PT was pretty terrible about making this distinction clear and I agree we’ll never see the end of it if we start talking about Yoda being right/wrong. Still, Anakin’s line arguably foreshadows the real reason he fell–not because of love, but because he failed to love Padmé unconditionally. Because he was willing to mistreat her unless she complied with him to soothe his fears, and unless she overlooked the terrible things he had done. His desire to control and possess overwhelmed his love, and that was why he fell. This was arguably also the foundation for his choosing to follow Luke back, when he realized he was wrong and saved Luke despite his defiance of his wishes.
I don’t understand the people who say that Kylo would have worked better if he had been a random, I really don’t. Kylo’s connection to the Skywalker bloodline, along with the lack of clear motive for his actions, is the entire point.
See, he’s a Nazi.
Okay, so technically he’s an allegory for a neo-Nazi in a space fantasy setting, but given that this hellsite has a distinct difficulty with complex concepts I’ll keep it simple. He’s a Nazi.
Why did Nazis do what they did? Why do neo-Nazis do what they do?
If you peel away all the embellishments and propaganda it comes right down to this: they see themselves as having a special legacy, a special bloodline to protect and they have a right to do so because they feel they’ve been chosen.
JJ has said that the early concept of Jedikiller only started working when they made him connected to the Skywalker bloodline, to the chosen family in Star Wars.
Kylo’s motivation, like that of all Nazis, is that he’s doing this because he belongs to the chosen people and thus have a right to rule. Not because he’s qualified, but because he belongs to the destined people.
No it’s not deep or complex, but it was never meant to be. Kylo is an antagonist and one JJ always meant to emulate a neo-Nazi. Giving him complex motivation would have detracted from this and, like with the real life equivalent, made it possible to justify what he’s doing because he has X, Y, Z motivation. Instead JJ gave him the most basic motivation of Nazis, he’s right because he’s chosen and because he has the strength to do what he does.
It’s not glorious. It’s pathetic, sad and ultimately someone who’s irredeemable. Not because he couldn’t choose differently than he does but because it’s not a motivation that makes anyone want to see him redeemed.
Of course, even people who sees Kylo as a villain and antagonist have a really hard time accepting him being a Nazi, so maybe this view isn’t really that surprising.
I mean the actor himself told us that Kylo Ren is an elitist (link), it’s not that deep people.
[Adam Driver] refuses to see his character as bratty. “There is a little bit of an
elitist, royalty thing going on,” he says, reminding us that the
character’s estranged mom is “the princess. I think he’s aware of maybe
the privilege.”
Cass Sunstein has criticized TLJ in part because Kylo didn’t fall due to losing a loved one (link), but maybe that’s because… Kylo is no Anakin… and is not nearly as sympathetic?
Mr. Dark Side, Kylo Ren, does have a bit of a struggle, and in that
sense, Johnson maintains continuity with Lucas’s vision. But in this
movie, at least, the struggle turns out to be a head fake. Because
Kylo’s descent doesn’t have the precipitating cause of Anakin’s – the
loss of loved ones – and because we don’t see Kylo suppressing the
better angels of his nature, the film doesn’t come anywhere close to the
depths of Lucas’s films.
If anyone is positioned as the new Anakin–but with a happy ending–it’s Rey, in struggling with the loss of loved ones, or at least her idea of them, and also in resisting manipulation by her would-be abusive mentor Kylo where Anakin fell to Palpatine’s manipulation. It’s interesting that Sunstein couldn’t recognize this story when it manifested in a female character, though to be sure it’s a common enough blind spot and RJ didn’t make it easy for anyone.
Precisely.
People, not just Cass here, are obsessed with having Kylo be the next Vader/Anakin, but he isn’t. Not to mention they’re even more obsessed with the reason why he fell to the Dark Side than they are with Rey’s parentage.
But let me ask you something. Did we know why Anakin fell in the OT? No, we didn’t, because the reason for it wasn’t relevant to Luke for whom Vader was a foil.
Is it relevant to Finn or to Rey why Kylo fell? So far we’ve been given not a single reason why this information should be relevant to either of them, so I don’t get why people are so upset about not knowing.
Except as yet another case of prioritizing the white guy over the two actual leads in the ST. Kylo’s motives for turning to the Dark are no more interesting or relevant to the narrative than Vader’s were in the OT. It’s not a plot hole, it’s not a flaw in the storytelling, it’s intentional. Only the parts of Kylo and his actions that are pertinent to Finn and Rey are relevant to the story, and unless someone can come up with a good reason why either of them should remotely care about it it’s going to remain irrelevant.
It’s why I was so attached to the idea of Rey Solo, I admit, because it would reconcile Kylo being like Anakin with the reason for his fall being relevant to Rey. The why would tie into Rey’s story while the how would directly contrast with Finn’s.
But it looks like the ST is going to go the route of only the how being relevant to both Rey and Finn. Rey at the end of TFA and even more throughout TLJ is where Kylo used to be, only to make different choices: she was chosen and groomed by a powerful Dark Force user while vulnerable and alone, but unlike Kylo she told the guy to fuck all the way off and chose to stand with her friends, not murder them. Finn throughout TFA and TLJ continues to present a direct contrast to Kylo Ren at every point, from backgrounds to choices to responses to abuse.
Rey is the one who could have been Kylo, had Kylo succeeded in his efforts. Finn is the one who stands in complete opposition to Kylo, and Kylo hates him for it.
This only strengthens the Finnrey/Anidala feels, by the way. Anakin/Rey was Palpatine/Kylo’s chosen victim-apprentice, but where Anakin chose the darkness and servitude Rey chose the light and freedom. Padmé/Finn was Palpatine/Kylo’s rival and enemy, but where Palpatine succeeded in destroying Padmé Kylo failed because where Anakin turned against Padmé, Rey was steadfast in her loyalty to Finn. We have no idea and no reason to care why Palpatine fell other than his desire for power, and the same is true of Kylo.
L.J.'s Obsessions 