(star Wars Republic #57)

(star wars republic #57)

the jabiim arc from legends is an underrated goldmine of fucked up content, and specifically the fucked up content i really love to see - Padawans At War, The Chancellor Is Being A Freak In Public, Anakin Skywalker Has Enough Issues To Instantly Kill A Bull Elephant, all of the things that i consider important star wars content. for context, obi-wan and anakin are called in to support other jedi generals and a republic loyalist faction of jabiimi on jabiim, where they’re fighting against separatist-loyal jabiim soldiers, decrying the republic’s imperialism and doing normal things like chanting for jedi blood in the rain. there’s no hope of enforcements and over the course of the arc, every single jedi master (including obi-wan, who fake dies, as obi-wan does every single time he dies) on the planet dies, leaving these kids - the “padawan pack”, a group of orphaned padawans - the only military officials in charge of the campaign, and in this scene, anakin suggests that they all make a final stand in order to delay separatist forces long enough to evacuate the rest of the republic’s forces and officially retreat. Getting The Fuck Out Of Dodge has been an ongoing desire and problem for our band of heroes. but this suggestion is a death sentence for them all, but it buys everyone else a little bit of time to get away.

right after this bit, though, there’s this, which fulfills the quota for The Chancellor Is Being A Freak In Public:

“persistence”, or the fact that palpatine can snap his fingers and the separatists are like cool, let that one singular communication through. that’s just our man on the inside, no biggie.

what’s fun about this is that anakin doesn’t want to leave his fellow padawans, but palpatine leverages his personal relationship with anakin to make it happen; he doesn’t say I AM THE SENATE, he says i’ve put my faith in you time and time again, and then mentions the republic. palpatine does a really great job of making anakin do things he doesn’t like by presenting a worse reality - it’s his whole gambit in ROTS - but in this instance, the worse reality is failing palpatine. anakin’s made it very clear that if he absolutely feels it’s necessary, he’ll disobey orders, so what palpatine does here is really clever, in issuing a command in the one way that anakin can’t resist - staking their relationship, something anakin covets, on it.

when anakin leaves to go guide the evacuation, this is what happens:

because anakin most definitely did not go on to live a good life. in fact he lived the actual opposite of that. he fucked it up big time, dude. this line is like a sucker punch.

but, you know, all of these padawans die. one of these padawans even falls to the dark side in the fight where she’s watching all of her peers die horribly and violently, and then subsequently dies. every single jedi on jabiim died a brutal, horrific death, and at the evacuation, all of the orders fall on anakin because somehow, a nineteen year old is the highest ranking military officer left on the planet, which is really just, like, holy shit. how is that even a thing. but the chancellor promised an evacuation for the republic troops and the (now hunted) jabiimi republic loyalists, and then there’s too few ships to fit everyone on there, and the decision of who to save - the troops or the loyalists - falls on, again, the new highest ranking military officer on the planet, a guy who can’t buy a beer in the USA because he’s too young. anakin has literal seconds to choose what hundreds, if not thousands, of people he’s going to damn to death today, and he chooses to save the republic’s troops, and the loyalists open fire but - and it’s his baby boy time to shine - anakin strangles their leader with the force, which shocks them all so badly the republic forces have enough time to escape.

bonus points, anakin stumbles backwards and apologizes for strangling the guy, because it’s the first time he’s ever used the force to strangle anyone. so those are the circumstances baby darth vader learned his signature move. he even says so, later, while doing something fucked up:

because, well, the really great thing that happened was, after losing literally fucking Everyone, anakin was immediately (and i mean, like, he just walked off the ship from jabiim, immediately) stationed to a healer’s ward to go do healing. this will not be the last time anakin freaks out so badly at the concept of another person dying that he tortures them by trying to keep their hearts beating longer with the force. i rate the jabiim arc 10/10 at setting anakin up with more problems, a thing we all knew he needed.

what i really like, though, is how personally responsible anakin feels for all of this; he has to fix it, because he’s the one who broke it, even though he kind of isn’t, not here. i love that palpatine ostensibly created anakin his very own trolley problem, a thing that’s meant to be a theoretical, not a lived psychological experience. i like that a guy fresh from the horrific death of his mother, who makes a solemn pledge to stop his loved ones from dying, immediately tries to test it out with horrific results on his fellow jedi, because the alternative - being responsible for more death, feeling more grief, losing more people - is so untenable to him, and i like that ROTS isn’t just some one-off thing, it’s the culmination of years of this one guy getting the same wound ripped open, with no space or ability for any kind of closure for anything. it’s just damage all the way down. i like that anakin’s character begins as this really generous, kindhearted kid, feels-deeply kid, but it’s that same empathy, that same compassion, that makes it impossible for him to separate himself from this kind of massive, constant loss, that he can’t compartmentalize the horrors of war because he is just stuck living it. i mean, that’s fucked. that’s really fucked.