Man, Throwing Down His Sword In Outraged Disgust: No! This Is Not What I Signed Up For! There Are Limits

If you are living right now in 2023 and are still a big fan of LOTR please reblog bro where are my fellow Tolkienites (Tolkieneers?)

Aaron Horkey

🗡𝐹𝑜𝓁𝓁𝑜𝓌 𝔇𝔲𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔬𝔫𝔩𝔲𝔰𝔱 𝑜𝓃 𝒯𝓌𝒾𝓉𝓉𝑒𝓇 & 𝐼𝓃𝓈𝓉𝒶𝑔𝓇𝒶𝓂

🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️Happy Trans Visibility Day!!! 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️

did I ever mention that I know someone whose family owned a zombie dog because that’s some real shit that I get to delight with at parties

I have only two words. Oh dear.

okay so I’m having a lot of feelings about the parallels between Anakin and Bode’s fall to the dark side and I need a place to scream about it so here it is

putting the rest under a cut because I already KNOW I’m about to go off

alright and before I go any further, I want to clarify that I don’t imagine the writers for Survivor sat down and went “hmm what kind of character can we make to rival the tragedy of Anakin? I know! we’ll just make the same character… but different…” I just think that the general path to the Dark Side tends to be similar for a lot of people. there just happens to be a lot of overlap for these two characters specifically. and if the similarities WERE intentional. well. honestly that would be very Star Wars-core of the writers. the overlapping rings and parallels between trilogies has been important to the storytelling of Star Wars from the beginning.

moving right along tho. I think it’s impossible to say when their actual journey to the Dark Side TRULY begins (I imagine Anakin growing up a slave and Bode living through the Purge might have been the whisper of wind that eventually blew over the first domino) but I think it’s safe to say that the Big Moment for Anakin was when his mother died in his arms. and his heart was so filled with grief and anger that he was driven to revenge. not just the men… but the women and children too. we all know the story.

and it’s harder to know for sure with Bode, since we don’t actually see his reaction, but I’d wager losing his wife had a similar effect on him. even Kata herself says that losing her mother changed her father. and we know from the post-game Force echoes that, aside from protecting Kata, Bode’s work for Denvik was also to learn the identity of the Inquisitor who killed his wife. he’s been living with this burning seed of rage in his heart, this desire for vengeance even though revenge is not the Jedi way.

so then you just have these two people, living with the GUILT of not making it in time to save the one they loved. these two people who have been so traumatized by their loss, that the thought of losing anyone else is unbearable. the love that these two hold for those still living that are closest to them— for Anakin it’s Padme, for Bode it’s Kata— is corrupted by fear and turns into attachment. slowly but surely, they are consumed by one impossible goal: protect Padme/Kata AT ALL COSTS.

enter The Cost. at a certain point, Anakin becomes convinced that Palpatine is the only one who can help him save Padme. he’s willing to throw away EVERYTHING ELSE for that one chance. he’s willing to kill younglings, he’s willing to execute the entire Jedi order for it. he’s willing to break Padme’s heart. meanwhile, Bode becomes convinced that Tanalorr is his one salvation for Kata and he’ll do whatever he has to in order to get her there. he’s willing to kill Cordova, he’s willing to lead the entire Hidden Path to their doom for it. he’s willing to trap Kata in a life of isolation— as long as she’s still ALIVE.

and all throughout this, these two have formed this brotherhood with a certain someone. a bond formed through the hell of fighting a seemingly endless war. for Anakin, it’s Obi Wan. for Bode, it’s Cal. it’s so interesting to me to think about the last interaction these two pairs had with each other before Everything Happened. Anakin seeing Obi Wan off before he takes on Grievous. Dooku was already dead. after all this fighting, the war was SO CLOSE to being over. Obi Wan tells Anakin he’s grown to be a greater Jedi than he could ever hope to be. and then contrasting Bode’s last night with Cal. after all this fighting, they’re so close to finally being SAFE. the guilt of what Bode’s about to do weighs so heavily on him, yet Cal can only see a brighter future. he tells Bode that they couldn’t have done it without him. these quiet moments of connection before they lose everything.

then everything just comes to a head when these brother figures finally confront Anakin/Bode. Anakin flies off to a fiery hellscape. Bode flies off to a lush paradise. they both believe they’ve left their brother behind for good. and then Padme unintentionally brings Obi Wan to Anakin. Kata very deliberately takes Cal to Bode. I think it’s at this moment where both Anakin and Bode go from agitated to full on enraged. there’s such a clear moment where the both of them snap and it’s no longer about “protecting” their loved one, it’s about destroying this one person who stands in their way. Anakin Force chokes Padme. Bode lashes out with the Force at Kata TWICE. (At one point, Kata may have even fallen to her death if Merrin hadn’t been there to save her.)

the tragic ending to both Anakin and Bode’s story happens when they lose themselves and fight to kill their brother. the tragic ending to their story happens when they become the very danger they fought so hard to protect their loved one from.

I think there are two main differences between Bode and Anakin’s story. the first is from an audience perspective. I mentioned before that we don’t actually SEE a lot of Bode’s story leading up to his fall. Anakin, however, we see from the very beginning. except we KNOW he’s doomed. we KNOW he’s going to end up as Darth Vader. we just don’t know HOW. and it’s heartbreaking in its own way to see Anakin be so fundamentally GOOD knowing how he’s going to end up. Bode on the other hand…

from the beginning, Bode is just a guy. he’s Cal’s new friend. he’s a great fighter and he immediately fits right in with Cal’s family of strays. you have no idea what’s coming. personally, when I first played, my only suspicion of him was that he was beginning to doubt Cal’s vision of Tanalorr. and I thought maybe he’s right? a running theme of the game is that Cal just doesn’t know how to STOP FIGHTING. perhaps Bode just thinks this supposed safe haven from the Empire isn’t the place to… continue the fight against the Empire. and even after Bode blatantly betrays everyone, the extent of his motivation wasn’t clear to me until the confrontation on Nova Garon. before then, I was doubting everything he’d ever said. did he actually have a daughter named Kata? was his name even really Bode? these kinds of questions never come up in Anakin’s story. we know everything about him and WHY he’s doing it. but I think this unknown factor around Bode is what makes his betrayal just… sting more. it makes US want to shout, “you were Cal’s brother, Bode! he loved you!”

and finally the second difference which is from a narrative perspective. and it’s the fact that, at the very end, Anakin DID return to the light. Bode never got that. and I think it mostly hinged on the fact that people still BELIEVED in the good in Anakin. it was one of Padme’s dying words. there’s still good in him. Luke was ready to DIE for that belief. Luke absolutely REFUSED to give into fear, to strike down the Emperor or his father in anger. at the most critical moment, Luke resisted the Dark Side. he chose love and THAT’s what saved Anakin and brought him back to the light.

for Bode… he didn’t have that. I’m not sure if anyone really believed in him by the end. which is… understandable. as I said earlier, I myself was questioning everything about Bode after his betrayal. I can’t imagine how Cal, who trusted Bode with HIS LIFE, would feel. Merrin herself told Cal it was kill or be killed. Cal even admitted that he has so much hatred for Bode. hell, he even straight up “embraces the darkness” to win his fight against Bode. Cal gave Bode multiple chances to surrender, but his motivation to give those chances were all about Kata. it was all about how Cal and Merrin know what it’s like to lose their whole family and don’t want Kata to go through that. not once does Cal say “I know this isn’t you, Bode. I know there’s still good inside you.”

this isn’t a criticism on Cal, by the way. he’s walked a very different path than Luke. he’s at a very different point in his journey than Luke was when he confronted Vader. Cal was (understandably) in the middle of battling the Dark Side in HIMSELF at the time. he wasn’t in a place where he could pull someone ELSE from that path. and honestly, I think it just makes this story that much more heartbreaking. maybe there WAS a chance for Bode, but the stars just, very tragically, weren’t aligned for him.

I don’t really have a conclusion for all these thoughts, just that it’s so fascinating that their stories are so similar despite such different circumstances. it’s so fascinating that they still somehow ended the same yet so differently. I’m really going to be thinking about Bode’s story for a long time. I haven’t felt this way about a character’s arc in… awhile. it’s such peak Star Wars to me, to be honest, and it’s really disappointing knowing that the audience for this story is limited to just gamers and people who enjoy watching gaming videos. it really deserves the attention of a mainstream movie, in my opinion.

Unmute !

I wanted to meme before the big day.

Not yet, Brutus.. not yet..