El-Adrel - Metaphorically Speaking

Watching again on youtube.  The only thing better than "What? He was going to blow up the ship!"  is the way Anakin immediately averts and shades his eyes afterward, because if it were any couple but Obi-Wan and the Duchess they'd be having a "We survived!" kiss. It tickles me that Anakin clearly doesn't want to see the closest thing he has to a father making out with a woman. LOL.  But alas, it IS Obi-Wan and the Duchess, so there's no kiss, and poor Anakin is just funny.

She called him "Obi"!!!   :::snort:::

Merrik's disgust with their Lucas-like professions of love is hilarious.

Those little spider droids are incredibly creepy. Creepier than their "mother".

I think Obi-Wan and Satine have their own love theme!!   It starts when she says "I'm not quite sure how to say this" and really gets going as Obi-Wan's talking about leaving the Order. There's a little bit as she leaves. Then it's very faint under the landing pad discussion and again, swells as she walks away. The melody reminds me of something else. . .can't think what it is.  Unless I'm wrong and they've used that cue elsewhere in the series? 

Speaking of soundtracks, did this episode seem more conventionally symphonic than usual or was it just me?

I like the way the Duchess's hands shake on the gun, nice detail.

Also, I'm curious about Merrik's use of the term "cold-blooded killer" and the apparently intended foreshadowing with Anakin.  Normally I would think Merrik knew he was full of it and was just playing mindgames with Obi-Wan and the Duchess by characterizing it that way. But given the use of the Imperial March when Anakin shows up, it seems like the writers actually think what Anakin did qualifies as a "cold-blooded" killing.  

Now, according to Wordsmyth (my favorite site for such things while browsing), "cold-blooded" means:

done without or lacking kindness or other humane feelings; heartless; cruel.  With the example: a cold-blooded assassin.

Which seems odd. Kindness isn't really applicable to the situation. Neither is heartless.  And Anakin was actually the opposite of cruel, given where he stabbed him, death was probably instantaneous. Now Anakin clearly isn't bothered by killing the man, but I--for one--don't really see why he should be. Merrik was threatening to blow up the ship and all its passengers.  Which brings me to the other interpretation. "Cold-blooded" as "in cold blood". Which Wordsmyth defines as:

with calculated malice.  And compares to premeditatedly. Not the best definition, perhaps.

Either way, "in cold blood" clearly doesn't apply here either. The man was threatening to set off a bomb. Many people were in imminent danger.  Anakin probably did plan to kill Merrik as far as it was necessary to get that corridor and sneak up behind him.  But I wouldn't call it malicious.

I would contrast this situation to the way Anakin killed Dooku in ROTS. Dooku was thoroughly beaten, and Anakin had the time to stand there and debate with himself about whether or not to kill him.  He clearly believed he shouldn't, but did it anyway because he, Anakin, wanted to.  Not because it would be hard to get Dooku off the ship in custody, or because he really believed Palpatine about "he's too dangerous to be kept alive", but because Anakin hated Dooku.  That was in cold blood.

With Merrik, I suppose Anakin could have cut off the hand holding the trigger.  And in that sense, it was rather ruthless to just kill Merrik instead. Killing him wasn't merciful.  But it was effective and full proof in a moment of great danger.  And I hardly think it rates "The Imperial March" in the background.

And the uproar will start in 3. . . 2. . .

Until I can watch it again (so busy laughing and gasping that I missed some stuff tonight) let me just quote myself from last week:  

I have this hilarious mental image of Qui-Gon trying to ride herd on padawan!Obi-Wan and teenage!Satine while they snark and flirt

Somebody write some fic now!


Also, does Satine strike anyone else as being a plausible Karen Traviss self-insert? (If we didn't know she'd thrown a fit about it, I mean.)

I did say at the beginning that it wouldn't all be Star Wars.

I've just been watching Possession.  I read the book (by A. S. Byatt) in grad school.  One of the very, very few books I read for class that I actually enjoyed, and that served my definition of literature, as opposed to the ivory tower literary elite definition, though they seem to approve of it as well.  Even a broken clock is right twice a day.  Anyway, the movie is pretty disappointing, despite Jennifer Ehle, though I cut it some slack on the grounds that making a movie that would do justice to that book is obviously impossible.  Still, they left out the Melusine-issue entirely. How did they manage that?  And I have a really hard time taking Lena Headey seriously as Blanche Glover. But maybe it wouldn't bother me if I hadn't known her in 300 and as Sarah Connor first.

That said, the beginning of the love scene between Christabel and Ash is one of the most erotic things I've ever seen. And they're both fully clothed (by our standards anyway).  Once his clothes come off it's just the same old stuff (though I'm amused that she's still wearing her chemise, and the filmmakers seem to feel it necessary to make up for that with an unusual position).

Now I need a non-Star Wars icon for this journal.

So let's forget about crazy Karen now and move on. 

I never did find a pic of Sean Connery that would make a good Altis icon, but it doesn't matter because I had a much better idea awhile back.  I just realized I never actually wrote it down.  Anyway, while looking for pics and getting discouraged because I couldn't find what I wanted, I realized that by fixating on Connery I was being an idiot and missing a lot of possibilities.  So then I thought: Morgan Freeman! But no, I couldn't find good pics there either.  And he wasn't quite right anyway.  And then the perfect actor hit me.  Ron Glass.  Shepherd Book is probably the closest thing there is to Djinn Altis anyway!

And now I've found a decent pic. I just haven't been quite satisfied with my photoshopping efforts yet.

But this decision has led to a great many amusing mental images already.  Jubal Early was inspired by Boba Fett after all. 

So I've been sortof defending Traviss, or at least admitting that I didn't see what made people so mad.  From what I'd read of her work, the controversial opinions about the Jedi Order seemed to me to mostly arise logically from the characters professing them.  It didn't really feel like an authorial rant to me.  Apparently though, the book that really got people worked up was Triple Zero, which I haven't read, and not Order 66 which I have read and figured it would have the most of that sort of opinion.  But reading more reviews of her LOTF books and other commentary, I'm realizing how little attention I paid to those books. I seem to have missed a lot of what IS clearly authorial ranting, probably because so much of the story was ridiculous that I just didn't care that much. (The whole Jaina training with Fett thing? Skipped big chunks of it out of sheer disinterest. Apparently that included some of the worst pro-Mandolorian and anti-Jedi stuff.)  

But none of that matters so much anymore, because now I've read her webpage. Specifically, I read this, which is Traviss's FAQ answer to the question, "Is it true that you hate Jedi?"   And what her answer amounts to is: No, I don't hate Jedi. I just fear and hate people who disagree with me about Jedi.

Here's an excerpt:

But once you're past the age of puberty and you start arguing passionately with me that the Jedi were right to accept a slave army of cloned human beings and use them in war, and cloned humans aren't proper humans like us, and it was too bad the clones died, and the Jedi had no choice - well, sweetheart, I want to run a mile from you. Not the Jedi, who - just to remind you - are a figment of various writers' imaginations, just like the clones. You. If I see that you really mean it, and you're making excuses in your own mind for the Jedi just following orders on that delicate point, then you scare the living crap out of me. For real.

Now it's my turn to back away slowly from you, Karen. 

Now, I do agree with Traviss--to a certain extent-- that just because the Jedi are the designated Good Guys doesn't mean they are incapable of wrongdoing, and that they did, in fact, do some seriously shitty stuff sometimes.  They were in a moral quandary--as a group--about using the clones, they did need to be questioned about that and other things. They were certainly drifting into some scary territory in ROTS.  They're complete idiots when it comes to human psychology and trauma. I take serious issues with some of their child-rearing practices.  And I'm really not a fan of the whole ivory tower, rule by fiat, judge, jury and executioner deal (though I never expected to be agreeing with that nutcase Daala about anything.)  And God knows I agree with Traviss 100% about Anakin being "a tragic character who's been betrayed by everyone."  But where Traviss and I irrevocably part ways is in this interview where she says:

Believe me, Order 66 was long overdue. I have a couple of Jedi that I don't want to shoot on sight, but they're my own creations, so I could make them a little humbler and more aware of the consequences they create for others.

Let me get this straight, Karen.  You think anybody who find your opinions surprising and disturbing (and seriously, given the prevailing opinions until you showed up, who wouldn't at first?) and argues with you about them, is

someone who harbours a vile and degrading belief in the concept of Untermensch - the idea that some humans aren't human at all, and we can do as we like with them, for whatever arbitrary value we put on the words "real human." You're looking for ways to sift your kind of human from the humans who don't matter, and who can be consigned to the fate of animals. In fact, if you use the phrase "real humans" at all, my case is proven.

And then you go for the jugular:

It's slave-owner-think: it's Nazi-think. And yes, I bloody well hate it. . . .It's not about Jedi - who don't even exist. It's about you.

But let's rewind, Karen.  Because who is it here who is actually advocating and approving of genocide? ("Believe me, Order 66 was long overdue.")   That's right, Karen. It's you.  It's you who are claiming that opinions about fictional characters and situations reveal real-world ethical positions and then talking about how much you hate and fear the real-world people who disagree with you and then telling us all how you  think the entire Jedi order should have been murdered down to the last infant earlier than it actually happened .

You know who scares the hell out of me? That would be you, Karen Traviss. 

I'm actually kinda glad now that she's not writing Star Wars anymore. And it's sad, because I enjoyed Order 66 and I loved No Prisoners, and her Djinn Altis is just about the coolest thing in the SW EU since Del Rey took over. I just read her novelization of the Clone Wars movie for the first time and nearly cried over one line that got Anakin-as-I-see-him so perfectly.  And I'm not the sort that boycotts or bashes authors because I don't agree with their personal beliefs (what's been done to Orson Scott Card, for instance, makes my blood boil).  What matters is the story and the skill with which it is told, and even when the author's personal beliefs create something within the story with which I disagree, it's still worth reading and talking about it.  People who refuse to read anything that doesn't tell them exactly what they want to hear are sad, boring and ignorant. I almost certainly would read any further SW book that Traviss wrote, if she came back (though I can't promise I'd read it with close attention, unless it was about Altisian Jedi or Anakin) . 

But still, I have to admit that knowing she's a hateful raving hypocrite takes some of the joy out of it for me.

Found it on youtube and ROTFLMAO

Obi-wan finally found a woman as bitchy as he is!!   Well, if you don't count Siri Tachi.  And now, of course, I'm dying to know the backstory there.  I have this hilarious mental image of Qui-Gon trying to ride herd on padawan!Obi-Wan and teenage!Satine while they snark and flirt and he desperately tries to complete his diplomatic mission.  If that did happen, no wonder he didn't have much problem with Padme in TPM, at least his padawan wasn't horny and egging her on!

I can't wait for the next episode. Anakin is going to <i>love</i> this. If he wasn't so fixated on Padme, I'd expect him to even be a little turned on by the resemblance. 

She threw a rock!!! LOL

Seriously though, I'm afraid I don't understand what Karen Traviss thought was so irretrievable about the continuity.  The colony on the moon seems an obvious way to reconcile things. Especially if you take POV into account (which she seems to revel in, otherwise) and speculate that her Mandos just refuse to acknowledge the existence of the planet, which is why the fact that their home is a moon never comes up.  Of course it wouldn't be perfectly smooth, but that's hardly unusual in SW continuity.

Just a quote I came across that made me think of Anakin:

"The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers." --Carl Jung

Anakin, why are you taking your jailbait, half-dressed padawan to the downlevels? And then leaving her outside a "joint" by herself?

(There needs to be a CW commentary journal done as "notes to anakin".)

I want to see the moment that Anakin first gave Ahsoka the "This weapon is your life"-lecture, and his Oh-Hell-I-sound-like-Obi-Wan!!! moment.

And Anakin, where were you all night while your padawan was chasing a criminal all over the Government district with an elderly (and retired?) Jedi master? As if we didn't know. Sigh.

(And if there's A/P going on, can't we at least have a peek, Dave??? Pretty please?)

BTW, did Master Sinube escape from a Jim Henson movie or something? I almost expected him to wear a talking hat.

This first one is one of the first really good vids I saw when I was just discovering them, and I still adore it. I haven't seen another vid use this song ("I'm Still Here" by Vertical Horizon), which is a rare thing. I'd call it an almost wistful treatment of Anakin and Obi-Wan's relationship across all six movies, with some lovely intercutting between films, including my favorite back-and-forth of lightning attacks ever. The use of movie dialogue is really nice too.

"The lights go out, the bridges burn, once you're gone you can't return, but I'm still here . . ."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PrfJ41IJTk

This is another early favorite for me, and another bittersweet musical choice. It might as well be titled "Obi-Wan and the Force" and I think it really captures the best of Obi-Wan as a Jedi, despite his flaws.

Best use of "Dare You To Move" by Switchfoot

Because I loved the song, and really wanted to see it done justice with Star Wars.



The theme of the "shadow" of Anakin in Luke's life is something I really love. Great match of footage to lyrics too. "Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell" is just Anakin's story in a nutshell.

This next one is not solely a Star Wars vid, but there aren't enough words for the brilliance of this vid and it does use SW footage at some key (perfectly placed) moments, so I think it belongs here.

Because the many ways in which Leia takes after Anakin are a fixation of mine. Unfortunately, this concept seems to lend itself to a lot of angsty, teenagery songs, and (perhaps as a consequence) the vidders tend to conveniently ignore the fact that despite Anakin's fall Leia grew up with a father and seems to have had a good relationship with him. I'm mostly willing to ignore the audio if it gets me good video work, but I do wish someone would tackle the issue seriously, canonically, and well. But in the meantime:



Force help us, it's a Lindsay Lohan song. But it's the best of use of that song I've found, and super major bonus points for the juxtaposition of Dooku's death with Jabba's.

Can't embed this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H64LFzSp-cI

Avril Lavigne isn't much of an improvement, but I'll grant the appropriateness to a certain extent (the Princess who's "not afraid of anything" and the Hero With No Fear?) and the Leia/Anakin splitscreens at :53, 1:25, 1:54 make me squee. Wish the vidder had included another splitscreen of Leia's plea to Luke on the Endor bridge and Anakin begging Padme at the fireplace on Naboo. The resemblance in some places is a little eerie considering how unrelated Hayden and Carrie are.

I say Vaderkin because one is primarily concerned with the end of ROTS, and the other with the end of ROTJ. They're both rather anti-Anakin (and both by the same vidder), but good enough that they deserve a place among my favorites anyway.



Love this song for Purge!Obi-Wan. Though I've become more sympathetic to Obi-Wan over the last couple of years, I still think he came very close to the Dark at the end of ROTS.



Something like Leia's post-ROTJ POV, I think. Not a perspective I agree with at all, but still a valid one. And well done.

Would have to be this one:




Bonus points for Unexpected-but-Perfect Song Choice and Trilogy Parallels, but it's the last five seconds or so that Win that moment in the film forever.

There are so many categories for this. I specified Old Obi-Wan here because I can't quite decide on my favorite Young Obi-Wan vid. And then there are Obi-Wan/Anakin vids (not slash). And it's not just characters and pairings, but concepts and songs that practically need their own category. (Yes, I spend way too much time on Youtube, still making up for years with just dial-up.) For example, Best Use of "How to Save a Life" in a SW vid. There are so many! ROTFL. Best attempt at the whole "Qui-Gon had a vision on Naboo" idea (I've yet to find one that I really love, but the idea is so cool!). Best Use of a Disney Song. . .

And why do I want to do this useless stuff when there are so many things I ought to be doing? Like working on applying for the privilege of spending another two years in the Hell-also-known-as-graduate-school.

I can't get over how much I love this vid.



The coloring and effects are gorgeous--and appropriate, especially the one starting at 4:40, with its interpretation of that moment in the Duel. I think it was Matt Stover who described it something like "their brains catching up the Force". Incredible. But it's the end and the Immolation that kills me. "Do you really love--do you really love me, dead or alive?" Oh, Anakin. And the only thing better than a great vid is a great vid that introduces you to a great new song.

Truth is, I love several of 1jonde1's Star Wars vids. Especially Life in Pieces. And no more new ones for six months! Nooooooo!

Maybe I should go back through all my links and write up some of my favorite vids in general. Save me time when I want to watch something and my rotten memory can't help me find it.

"We all lived to fight another day"??!?? WTF? Or am I mistaken that there was a full crew on Obi-Wan's cruiser? I didn't see anybody diving for the escape pods on that ship either. Granted, clones usually die left and right and nobody blinks, but a full cruiser-worth?

I forgot to note some of the things I particularly liked about the show (as opposed to the things that annoyed me.)

And it's all about Anakin. Anthony Daniels' script made a real point of the fact that the films are Anakin's story. But the part that made me happiest was his intro to the A Hero Falls segment when he described the reason for Anakin's fall as overwhelming fear (for Padme), despair, and agony. Thank you, 3PO!! The key word there is DESPAIR. I had to restrain a cheer. None of this power-mongering BS that it so often gets blamed on. Yes, he wanted power, but it was power to save Padme. Not for its on sake. At least not until after he was on the Dark Side high, and I don't think it was the prime reason even then. Don't get me started on Obi-Wan and the power-mad stuff. True that Obi-Wan didn't know about the dream, but even so, if he hadn't been so fixated on Jedi dogma about what the Dark Side was and what it meant, it might have occurred to him that hey, this is the kid he raised, and he really ought to know him at least a little by now, and the kid wasn't power-mad/insane when he left a few days okay, so hey, maybe something traumatic actually happened to him? Instead of. . . well, what WAS Obi-Wan thinking anyway? Sheesh.

Anyway, the montage itself emphasized the sudden-power-grab-for-no-apparent-reason angle, but I was happy with the intro.

And hey, I had my picture taken with R2D2 and made an icon! (slightly photoshopped, because weird lighting and pushy crowds and camera phones are not conducive to good photography).

As a sidenote: If I hadn't know it already, standing next to that droid made me realize exactly how much taller than Princess Leia I am.

I had the Best. Seat. Ever.

The music was amazing! Some of my favorite parts ended up being when the orchestra was onscreen. (I am a symphony brat, after all.) Especially the Imperial March encore, when they all seemed to be getting into it hardcore, except for one poor trumpet player who happened to get caught by the camera just at the moment he decided his lips were blown for the night and he gave up. Dad sympathized when I told him about it on the way home. Star Wars really does lean pretty heavily on the brass. Got them lots of great shots on the screen though, and there were some good moments for the strings too. Flying fingers! The harpist was awesome.

The exhibits were pretty cool, but it was so crowded, even after the concert, that getting pictures was really difficult. I finally did get a chance to get my picture with one of the lifesize R2s, but the woman I asked to take it (I went by myself) was an idiot and it came out unsalvagably blurry. I DID get some great pictures of the Amidala gown.

Lots of folks in costume, including a female stormtrooper, lots of overweight Jedi (including a Count Dooku-- please fanboys, unless your Old Obi-Wan after 20 years on Tatooine, a Jedi with a beer gut is just sad), and an adorable little girl in a foofy white lace dress and Leia buns, who went up on stage after the encore to deliver roses to the maestro and Anthony Daniels.

Anthony Daniels. . .oh, dear. What do I say? Other than ROTFLMAO?

And the vids themselves. Sigh. I tried to just focus on the cool factor of seeing SW on a massive screen, because some of those sequences were just WTF? Especially "Sanctuary Moon". WHY was half of that sequence from the Battle of Naboo??? Though the build-up to and explosion of the 2nd Death Star--complete with pyrotechnics on stage--was AMAZING. And "A Life Redeemed". . . why oh why do they end it on "He's more machine now than man"? And where was Padme outside of the Love video? And WHYWHYWHY did they wait to show any of the twins' birth until the finale???? Han was almost completely absent except for the asteroid field clips. My favorite moments were the sepia flashbacks in a few of the vids. Well, except for the moment when Obi-Wan hands Luke "your father's lightsaber" and the next clip is Anakin in the arena during the Battle of Geonosis---when he's using a borrowed GREEN lightsaber!! Snort. The first half was MUCH better.

All that said, it really was great. :) And the souvenir program is beautiful. Almost worth what they charged for it. I wanted the Tshirt with the stormtrooper playing a trumpet, but they didn't have any, and they were out of my size in the Darth Vader conducting shirt by the time I got there.