i just think Anakin is the sort of person to get really really into conspiracies— I’m talking 5am forty-eight hours deep into a ‘the moon landing was faked’ binge but because they’re in space it’s more like ‘Corellia is actually hollow and filled with a little-known species of Force-sensitive moles’ binge.
Which means what I really want is Anakin, age twenty two and on leave for the week, accidentally taking a deep dive into a political conspiracy forum and finding someone’s ‘Palpatine is actually a Sith Lord and going to take over the government’ theory and because it’s Anakin, you know his first reaction is going to be to write a hate comment, but the problem with writing a hate comment deconstructing someone’s argument is that you actually have to read the argument in-depth and, uh oh, the person actually makes some pretty good points.
‘It’s fine,’ Anakin thinks, ‘I’ll just go ask Obi-Wan to help me write this reply.” So you get Obi-Wan bent over a space laptop at three in the morning, reading a fringe theory and wishing fervently that Anakin would stop using him as a solution to all his problems. He reads the post— grudgingly, of course, because it’s three in the bloody morning and we are on leave, Anakin— gets to the end of it, and realizes that kneelover69420 made some very salient points.
Obi-Wan calls the council at three in the morning and has to defend a fringe theory from someone on an Internet in front of the most revered and venerable Jedi in the galaxy. It is quite possibly one of the worst moments of his life.
no, you’re totally right. Because Anakin’s life is ridiculous, okay. He was a slave on an outer rim planet for the first nine years of his life, and then within the span of a few days he: wins a podrace, gets freed, gets adopted, flies a starship and wins a battle, gets orphaned by his new adopted dad, and gets adopted again by his dead adopted dad’s other son. So of course his baseline for what counts as weird is totally off-base.
Obi-Wan, who was raised in the temple and knows what the Force can and can’t do and at least somewhat how the world works for normal people, can look at a conspiracy theory and go ‘this is clearly fake,’ but Anakin? Virgin birth Anakin? Will look at a theory proposing that all water on Coruscant is actually distilled apple juice and go ‘you know what? sure. midichlorians exist, and all water on Coruscant being distilled apple juice is actually less crazy than that, so it must be real.’
Damn now i really want a conspiracy theorist fic/au. In addition to no baseline for normalcy, he is canonically 0-60 ride-or-die in all of his decisions. Not to mention the whole antichrist thing where his beliefs literally can alter the fabric of reality. And half of a Jedi’s job is breaking up real conspiracies !
I think its canon that palps was suppressing info about the trade blockade so if little ani was trying to space google what happened, the earliest articles literally would have only been from fringe news outlets. Oh dear. the Jedi suppressed the fact that Qui-Gon was killed by a Sith not a random darksider. His first exposure to republic mainstream news is that they don’t know shit.
You know that on half their missions growing up Anakin would wander off and come back convinced by ramblings he overheard about the Duke secretly conspiring with their sworn enemies to steal everyones pets. And he would be at least 50% right30% of the time, so Obi-Wan has to hear him out. I just-
The ReTuRn of the SiTh probably made the rounds every so often for the last 500 years anytime a Jedi starts dressing suspiciously. Atlantis-classy conspiracy, you know. The sort of thing people with crazy hair talk about on the History Holo-Channel. So 15 year old Anakin bursts into Obi-Wan’s room and makes him spill hot tea allover himself and he can’t even get mad because Anakin’s hysterical-
“A garbageman saw the Sith from Naboo in the outer rim! He’s building robot legs and shouting about revenge!” *holds up blurry holo of a pile of trash*
Can you imagine??? Can you imagine? 5 years later. Not only does Obi-Wan have to deal with Maul coming back from the dead specifically to make him suffer personally, but Anakin would be insufferable.
