Luke Skywalker was despairing for longer than we may admit
it starts with Owen and Beru’s deaths, then Obi-Wan’s, then Biggs’s death. he’s nineteen when he signs up for a suicide mission readily, instinctively, without thinking twice. it just feels like what he’s meant to do.
in Empire Luke nearly gets himself killed and needs Han to risk his own life to save him. and then he manages to slow the Empire but can’t keep them from overrunning the Hoth base.
he tries to train his skills and his patience but neither progress very far. he has visions of becoming his most dreadful, most evil enemy. then he finds out his friends are in danger and runs off to save them, but it turns out to be a trap and he ends up maimed and confronted with a horrible, unbelievable truth
and he literally tries to kill himself. lets go and falls.
in RotJ he turns himself over to Vader and the Emperor out of fear that his friends will be in danger otherwise
he starts the movie watching Leia get captured and debased; Palp and Vader catch on that he’s got a sister and threaten to corrupt Leia as well and he absolutely loses it and nearly goes Dark before he realizes he’s trying to hack his own father to pieces with a saber.
once again, all Luke can do is make peace with his own end, and try not to lose his soul. he is helpless. the war is won as he’s screaming and twitching on the floor in horrendous agony. when he recovers, he finds his father – the father he thought he lost before he ever knew – back from some kind of death, and already dying a second time. there’s so much fatigue and pain layered into the victory. the movie doesn’t even end with the heroes returning to be honored by the galaxy. it’s just a celebration with a little group of allies on a remote planet, watched over by ghosts.
Luke was always going to need to face the fear that his very existence brought suffering and harm and death to everyone he loved. he was never a triumphant, confident champion. he was a young man growing up too fast from relentless loss. when it looked like his worst fears were coming true, he panicked. when his moment of panic brought those fears to fruition, and he crawled out of the wreckage surrounded by dead children he must have loved as if they were his own, he chose, as he did over and over, to surrender his will to live
it takes meeting a strange girl who believes in Luke the way Luke believed in Anakin — a myth, a source of strength and bravery — to tip the scales. he thinks, I’ll lose her the way I lost everyone else. I’m too dangerous. I hurt people I love. just like my father did. and this girl tells him, I believe in what you did for your father. I believe you brought him back, I believe he was saved, I believe anyone can be saved, or deserved to be given a chance.
even the man who hurts the people he loves
I love these metas and analyses that take young, pre-RotJ Luke way more seriously than fandom usually take him.
Hey everyone I am incredibly stoned and having a lot of feelings about our like fourth and most explicit canon confirmation that time is non-linear as far the Force is concerned in the Star Wars universe, and what this may actually mean for those who can sense it
Especially when it comes to how Force-sensitives experience memory (premonition as memory of possible future events) and experience their relationships to others (how much can you sense your future feelings about a person before you develop them?) and ESPECIALLY when it comes to attachment and what that implies/means if/when you are able to experience emotion in a non-linear manner.
I mean how many times when we see Force-sensitives fall in love they do it instantly hard and fast, bringing an intensity to the table their non-Force-sensitive partner often does not understand? When that pattern does not manifest, how often in its place do we see the Force-sensitive couching their feelings in terms of restraint or denial, hinting they feel an intensity that has to be held back?
What does it mean if through the Force you can sense the all encompassing love you will one day have for a person you may have only just met, or not met yet at all?
Or to use a truly and fully non-romantic example – when Leia tells Luke she always knew he was her brother somehow, could that have not been her sensing a biological bond, but rather her future relationship with him bleeding through into their past? Much as Padmé – who Leia never knew at all – could bleed through from her past in the form of visions/memories so Leia knew she was kind and beautiful and sad?
THIS IS SUCH A MIND BLOWINGLY FASCINATING THING TO THINK ABOUT.
That time is non-linear in the Star Wars universe, that Force-sensitives are tapping into this thing that is non-linear, which means they can be tapping into everything at once, all across the span of their lives (or possibly greater) and how that affects their (basically psychic) abilities.
How it affects these things that they just “always knew”, how Leia just always felt that connection to Luke, that it’s a little bit some part of her knowing what’s coming (and this puts Force users’ ability to know the future/past into a whole new light, that it’s the Cosmic Force’s non-linear nature brushing up against them) but also that she’s feeling her future feelings and her past feelings.
How it affects someone like Anakin Skywalker, who is already so overloaded with feelings and doesn’t want to do anything less than wholly embrace them–he’s piled on with all of his feelings for Padme over the entire course of his life, that he loves her instantly because he loves her in the future and all of that is jammed into him at once the first time he actually sees her?
What does this mean for Luke, who would be feeling all those terrible things Ben will do, but hasn’t done yet, but he still feels them and they’re still true? What does this mean for all those potential futures that Force-sensitives get a glimpse of, that Force Spirits can see and know would have been true?
I really love how massive and eldritch this makes the Force, how unknowable it can make the Force, because no mortal mind could really understand it, how this explores something new about the Force and yet seems to fit so well with everything else. Emotions in a non-linear manner, no wonder they’re always having to brace themselves, if you’re not only bombarded by what you feel in the moment, but occasionally the entire span of your life, the more you let those feelings run awhile, the more you’re hit with a mac truck of sheer emotions.
Obi-Wan experiencing his ENTIRE LIFE’S WORTH OF GRIEF AT MOMENTS, not knowing what it meant or where it was coming from, only that he sometimes felt this impossibly infinite span of sadness? THANKS, ANON.
also it was important for rose to be able to live out the ultimate female power fantasy, which is freeing something large and majestic and abused, then riding it on a terrifying destructive rampage through the corrupt halls of its captors, then freeing it to go cavort in the wild and be free. just look at how women write horses, and dragons, and wolves. just look at the passionate empathy teenage girls have for chained and wounded beasts.
so, i was extremely fucking delighted that star wars finally had a really specifically, quintessentiallyfemale power fantasy in it for once, instead of just more girls stepping into / reclaiming male power fantasies (and thereby reaffirming the universality of male desires and power structures).
i’m not at all surprised that so many adult men are saying ‘what’s the point of that?’ because they’re not the point of it at all. that part wasn’t written for them. it was for girls. even more than general leia was for girls, the Horse Girl Fantasy Ride was for girls, and i love that, and it was great, the end.
so the stormtroopers right. if they think u didnt fire ur blaster they inspect it & if you didnt they send you for reconditioning.
maybe. thats why. they never. HIT. anything.
they dont want to be punished but they dont really want to hurt anybody.
maybe.
DUDE
well this is an entirely strange new level of sadness
This has been observed in conflicts through out the last century and a half or so, Soldiers deliberately firing high and missing.
Oh. My. God.
Trooper QG-3148 was a sergeant placed on the Death Star a scant five months ago, but they had wanted to be part of the Imperial Forces since they were a small child. They were the best shot in their squadron with blasters, second best with rifles and had never missed a target when deployed.
So when that kid running around with the Princess crossed their path trying to escape, QCG3148 lined up the first shot to take them out…. and missed. The Princess with no world and her rescuer dashed off down another corridor and QG-3148 gave chase slowly. Couldn’t make it seem like they weren’t chasing the rebels, that would only put QG-3148 in trouble.
In every hallway they passed, troopers were marching in time, blasters at the ready. But no shots hit and none of the rebels were harmed. No words needed to be spoken between the ranks; they had all seen the destruction of the planet Alderaan and knew what needed to be done.
It was a secret between the Stormtroopers that the brass buttons had no notion of; orders were to be followed unless they proved to cause harm to your brothers and sisters. Veteran trooper CC-2224, nicknamed Cody among the troops, was adamant every Stormtrooper followed this creed before clearing them for duty. It seemed that every Stormtrooper on the Death Star remembered that lesson; many of them had families on Alderaan, after all. And now they were hurting.
well, shit. and that explains why hux’s stormtroopers CAN hit what they aim at. i mean, i haven’t seen tlj yet, but in tfa i quite clearly recall them rolling over that village like a lawnmower over a tennis ball. with a single exception, they were not firing to miss.
because they’ve been, as hux said, indoctrinated since birth. i imagine stormtrooper culture in the first order looks a lot more gung-ho than it did in the empire, because brendol hux was kind of a twisted genius in the brainwashing department, and armitage improved on his methods.
which brings us back to finn being a precious gem, because he was raised to be all HOOAH GET SOME but he still said no.
aka
“Look for the Force, and you will find me” and the Giant Middle Finger towards
the Chinese Inequalities
So a couple of weeks back, I saw this
video of an interview of Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen, in which someone asked them
about Baze and Chirrut’s relationship. They said a lot of things, mostly
teasing, but the video ended with Donnie smiling and saying, “They’re very good
brothers.”
My immediate, visceral reaction is bull-fucking-shit. And a sense of
absolute glee because I know he knows
that he’s talking bullshit.
I’ve been thinking for the last couple
of weeks about why it’s bullshit.
This post is the result. It’s pretty long, so: tl;dr Chinese culture is about extremely structured and strict societal
relationships, and Baze and Chirrut’s smashes that all into pieces to show how
people can be equal and not fit into boxes.
Disclaimer: I
grew up in a staunchly Chinese family in a Chinese-majority country and grew up consuming media from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. But I did not grow up in any
of those places. My country of origin is pretty damned Westernised. If I get
anything wrong, please tell me.
I have brought my tl;dr to a new fandom and I still keep it under a cut.
So… I have a guilty love of the prohibition era. I’dd never want to LIVE then, but int terms of really interesting social dynamics, fashion, art and narrative possibility, its really, really interesting. During the ‘Would-Bacta-work-as-lube?“ question posed by @poplitealqueen a few months ago, I set about scouring-SCOURING, I TELL YOU– Wookieepedia and all my SW-related material to find out what Bacta actually COST, and how it operated, to answer the question of whether it was economically and practically feasible. And I found out that:
1. It apparently makes ideal lube, as long as you don’t mind the smell of Pineapple.
2. It’s basically ultra-thick saline with suspended nutrients and ACTUAL BACTERIA in it.
(so, these next couple conclusions are made in the face of conflicting canons, but it’s the one that makes the most sense for how shit plays out)
3. Bacta is the GMO reconstruction of Kolto, which is a psuedo-parastic microorganism that may or may not be related to midichlorians that alters it’s DNA to turn into the host’s cells. (IDK it’s science fiction, roll with it) Kolto was the more effective substance, able to treat things like cirrhosis, brain damage, etc,- but was wiped out by a virus during the KOTOR era as part of a plot to get rid of the Jedi.
Good job guys.
So Bacta is the GMO they managed to cobble together afterwards with the remaining info they had, and while it’s pretty miraculous as a traumatic injury treatment, it doesn’t do chronic diseases like Kolto did
4. Bacta is literally grown in cultured vats, much the way insulin is farmed today.
5. While it’s heavily regulated in the TPM era, because it’s MEDICAL EQUIPMENT, it’s still really easy to grow once you get your startup costs out of the way.
6. The expensive part of bacta is the administration devices- bacta doesn’t do well in tubes, so you either need to keep a small live colony (a bacta tank ala ESB), or flash-freeze them in the ultra thick saline, and have a small…bacterial microwave, essentially, to thaw bits of it out for use.
7. During the clone wars, Palpatine subsidized the crap out of the bacta industry so he’d have enough for his army and the worlds loyal to him- post 66, he was a punitive asshole who controlled all “legitimate” (but not necessarily well-run) bacta production, and would just not ship it to worlds he didn’t like.
The point I’m getting at is- The conditions are PERFECT for there to be a massive Bootleg Bacta trade starting in TPM and going all through the empire (and into TFA probably, we’ll see what the timeline looks like once this all shakes out) Just thing- ALL the shenanigans people got up to with bootlegging, but with bacta.
People with illicit ‘stills’ in the basement, people doing insane planetary runs to get it to worlds in need- or pirating Imperial ships for the stuff. Kids going to school with an “ice pack” in their lunch bag, only to give the frozen bacta to their Rebel-sympathizing teacher. Imperial Facilities get raided by Bacta Pirates, not for the shitty imperial strain, but literally to pull the piping and saline tanks out of the walls.
Of course, some people are gonna be unscrupulous and cut corners with their vats, resulting in horrible mutant strains that do god knows what (but that’s another plot bunny). Or Strains of bacta that are more refined and effective, because much of the scientific Community was not friends with Sheevy P, even before the war.
AND CLONES WOULD KICK ASS AT BACTA FARMING- because a LOT of bacta farming happened On Kamino, and hell, it was probably part of chores to tend to the tanks. “Feed the vats so your brothers can live”
The HARD part about starting your own farm is 1. finding/making suitable vats 2. GETTING YOUR HANDS ON A GOOD STRAIN.
Kix becomes an unintentional fucktillionaire distributing the Kamino strain. He wasn’t even charging, people just kept giving him money.
“Uncle Jesse’s Extra-Viscosity Varmint Grease” is the joke name of the best strain. Kix is SO MAD that drunk Jesse named it that but you know? No imp inspection officer has ever wanted to open those barrels.
The things people pretend to be shipping instead of bacta though, which might actually include booze:
"Booze! Twelve million gallons of Zanbar Blue!“ “Oh that stuff is gross. Carry on.”
Also, the REALLY enterprising people who figure out how to start mixing spice in with their bacta- and create a medical revolution in the process. Glitterstim is a bad idea to snort, but the trace amounts in the “Candy Cane” strain heal nerve damage! "Pineapple express” is a strain that essentially acts as a topical PTSD treatment "Beskar Berserker” is a strain that has some pretty awesome painkiller/amphetamine combo, and while it was meant to keep people from coding, it becomes REALLY popular with former ARC troopers.
Hera gets Kanan a strain called “second sight” after he loses his eyes. She did it because it was supposed to be good for treating optic injuries and numbing visual hallucinations… they find out later it’s basically bacta + Midichlorian chow.
Anyway, this was a fun thought, please feel free to play with it if you want and tell me all about it
This is such a cool idea! If anyone decides to run with this, here are some facts about bacteria-growing to consider in case it helps (I’ve worked in a bio lab).
Bacteria can be frozen down at around -70˚C with a bit of glycerol (presumably the “ultra thick” descriptor of the saline). This doesn’t hurt the bacteria and it can be re-grown simply by scraping a bit off the frozen tube and rubbing it on an agar plate. You then pick the colonies that look right on the plate and grow only those ones.
It’s really hard to grow the bacteria you want and only the bacteria you want. The good bacta strains have probably been engineered to have resistances to some cheap and common antibiotics. The plates, ultra thick saline and any growth broth would contain these antibiotics to help limit bad/useless strains.
It’s an ongoing struggle to keep everything reasonably clean and sterile to prevent bad/useless strains from growing. There’s probably space-technology that makes it easy and the illegal stills may or may not have access to them.
Bacteria that interact with human bodies grow best at 37˚C (internal human body temperature) and when they’re shaken. The vats would absolutely be as sealed as possible. They would also have to be purified out of the growth broth and put in the ultra thick saline for use in humans.
Lots of bacteria are kind of smelly when they grow up to large numbers. A well-seasoned lab person can tell if the good kind or bad/useless kinds have grown just by the smell. Pro-tip: some bad/useless kinds smell rank.
OH MY GOD YOU ARE THE BEST
I’m running another EotE game soon and bacta-farming is almost certainly going to come up.
The concept of humanly toasty vibrating tanks is HILARIOUS tho, becuase we have a cat-dude in the party.
I figure that if SW has whatever magical tech that keeps kamino’s pristine halls pristine despite being occupied bu appx 5 million teenage boys, your average bootlegger can keep a few hot vibrating tanks reasonably clean. Space Windex or whatever.
Listen, there is an approximately 0% chance that Luke Skywalker doesn’t speak Huttese. He is fluent in Huttese, and probably in multiple dialects. He was beyond any doubt perfectly capable of communicating with Jabba the Hutt directly, in Jabba’s own language.
But he doesn’t. He insistently uses Basic when talking to Jabba, and he makes Threepio translate Jabba’s words before he replies. He acts for all the world as if he needs the translation.
Which he doesn’t. And Jabba must know damn well that he doesn’t. Because he introduced himself as Luke Skywalker, and that’s an unmistakably Tatooine name (and a slave name, at that).
Conclusion: Literally every word Luke Skywalker speaks throughout his interaction with Jabba if a veiled “fuck you.” Every single word.
see i know that we all like to make fun of luke skywalker, hick farmer from the back of nowhere, thinking that shooting womp rats with the space equivalent of his dad’s old rifle is somehow sufficient preparation for taking down the death star; but i love the idea that actually womp rats are six foot abominations of teeth, spines & poison and bulls-eyeing them is actually excellent preparation for the rebellion. think about it: swarms of six foot rats, and some skinny kid with an outdated weapon taking them out, cool as paint. hardened soldiers whisper scary stories to each other, about the monsters who scavenge in the sands, stripping a camp of everything living in five seconds flat, and luke just saying oh, womp rats? they’re nothing. great with a bit of butter and some toast.
REMEMBER THAT HE TOLD WEDGE, “THEY’RE NOTMUCH BIGGER THAN TWO METERS” LIKE THAT’S SOME MINOR INCONVENIENCE
BIGGER THAN TWO METERS
Wedge: So, you’ve been to Tatooine
Han: Yeah
Wedge: Womp rats?
Han: Sure. Chewie uses ‘em for bowcaster practice. Kinda gamey tasting. Sandy colored fur, lotsa teeth, little over two meters…
Wedge: Luke wasn’t lying???
Luke (head inside X-wing panel, tinkering): Why would I make THAT up?
Honestly, I’ve always thought that farm work on Tatooine, unintentionally, must have provided a fairly excellent groundwork in establishing Luke’s baby Jedi skills outside of an academy context.
There are of course the aforementioned womp rats, which are both terrifying and a fantastic way to develop shooting skills.
There’s beggar’s canyon for piloting. And if Phantom Menace brought us nothing else, it actually showed us the living death trap that is beggar’s canyon. He’s not like zipping around the Grand Canyon, he’s literally goofing off in a place that killed off a shit ton of professional pod racers. So needless to say, Luke’s had a chance to develop scary good reflexes, information processing, and spacial relation skills.
The Lars’s economic status means that they had to make do with ancient, crap equipment. Luke would have learned how to make incredibly fine tuned repairs, and keep shit going forever. And sure, he never built a C3PO or a pod racer, but honestly, if he found the materials to do it, he probably would have used them in a moisture collector.
And there’s even combat experience. From what we know about Tatooine, a farm like the Lars Homestead, would have been at risk for attacks by raiders, Jabba’s goons, and any of the terrifying hellbeasts that populate that planet. It’s not like Jedi temple training or anything. But Luke definitely learned to be cool under pressure, even when outnumbered or with really old, shit equipment.
I would just like to note that in The Old Republic MMORPG (set three thousand years before the movies) the womp rats are not only two meters long, covered in spines, with teeth as long as my hand, and sometimes DISEASED
BUT THEY ALSO ATTACK IN PACKS
You think you just pissed off ONE rodent as long as you are tall? Oh no. It’s calling ALL SIXTEEN OF ITS FRIENDS
AND THEY ARE ALL AIMING TO BITE YOUR CROTCH OFF.
*THAT’S* what Luke grew up sniping to keep them away from the droids and moisture vaporators. *THAT* (and Beggar’s Canyon) is what prepared him to take down the Death Star.
Womp rats are bad news.
My favorite thing is that they are just one example of how Luke doesn’t know he’s from a Death Planet until he leaves it.
i’m just going to reblog this so you can all enjoy the excellent commentary about my space son who is equal parts sunshine and tempered death
So you’re saying he’s not from Space Nevada, he’s from Space Australia
Reblogging for @flaminganakin‘s brilliant tags. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Anakin’s fatal flaw wasn’t his anger or his pride or his love for Padme. It was his deference. Luke is a good man because he refuses to compromise his morality just because some one else told him his should. Anakin fails as a good man specifically because he repeatedly compromises on things he knows are wrong. He gives in to his mother and Qui-Gon’s urging to leave Tatooine. He gives in to Obi-Wan’s orders to forget his dreams and his mother. He gives in over and over and over during the Clone Wars until, by the time of RotS, he no longer even knows how to listen to his own moral compass. As Vader, he is exactly the man the Jedi told him to be: unquestioningly obedient to authority with no attachments except the Force.
Luke is the exact opposite. He rejects the teachers of his ‘wise masters’ and insists, outright and without shame, on doing things his way. And he succeeds where they failed. Not by being a good solider (good soldiers fallow orders), but by being a good man.
“Anakin’s fatal flaw wasn’t his anger or his pride or his love for Padme. It was his deference.”
Funny how it’s Luke’s attachment and love for his friends (and later his love for his father, though he was corrupted) that saved the day. And funny how it’s Anakin’s continual sacrifice of those attachments (his mother, his wife) that leads him to complete mental instability.
This is from Dead Poets Society: “Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” The Jedi are so wrapped up in their notions of spiritual purity that they become completely dissociated from their own morality, and they see the Force as an end unto itself, rather than a force (hah) for good.
Example 1: slavery’s still a thing in the Republic? Even though it’s illegal? Should we do something about that? … Nah, better to not get involved. What the fuck?
The Jedi think they’ve figured out the meaning of life, but they’ve completely neglected the purpose. Spiritual excellence becomes divorced from moral excellence in a way that is completely arbitrary and therefore inherently unstable.
this is all to say, FUCK YOU YODA
i think we’re about to see this moral borne out with the third trilogy. rey is going to be like “hey teach, show me how to hit things. no, i’ll decide what to hit, thanks.” the jedi way is irrelevant; her own conscience will be her guide.
scrappy desert kid versus jedi philosophy, three ways.
just moving along like everyone else 