norcumi:

Mmkay. There’s this post floating around about Obi-Wan’s
characterization (link coming up in a minute). I want it on the
record that I am all for people characterizing fictional characters
however they want, on whatever criteria they have including “because
I was in the mood for it,” ‘cause going ‘there’s only one
true interpretation’ is totally a dick move.

Nonetheless this post has been slowly driving me bonkers so I’m
trying to do the polite thing and make my own post deconstructing it
rather than adding to theirs.

Hell, it starts off with “Please can someone explain to me why
there’s this fandom thing where Obi Wan is nothing but angst and
sads for 20 straight years on Tatooine?”

You betcha.

First off, OP is basing character assessment on the Myers–Briggs
Type Indicator. Look. I enjoy personality tests as much as the next
person, but that thing is just as useful to behavior prediction as a
Facebook quiz about which Disney Princess you are. Here’s a nice
convenient article about why which a minimum of digging on Google
netted me. MBTI presents archtypes that are sometimes useful for
casual commentary, but that is not a diagnostic tool.

So let’s take a look at Obi-Wan, as we see in the movies (and
Clone Wars), just after Revenge of the Sith. We have a man who is
anywhere from 33 to 38 years old (depending on your version of
canon), who has spent the last three years overworking himself at the
heart of a hideous civil war that he was essentially drafted for, and
oh yes, his side lost. Not only did his side lose, but it got
massacred. Yoda was able to feel the death of the Jedi Order as it
was happening, do not tell me that Obi-Wan had no idea what was going
on too. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan was also dealing with the betrayal of his
closest friend (his brother), who tries to kill him. Meanwhile, said
brother does kill his wife (pregnant
wife) who is a close friend of Obi-Wan’s, right there in
front of him. All this leads to Obi-Wan doing the unthinkable:
mutilating and then killing his brother – or worse, not being able
to kill Anakin, leaving him in torment for another two decades.

There is so much PTSD fodder here, and that doesn’t even touch the
betrayals from the clones, nor the question of ‘did he feel the
psychic backlash from the chips kicking in and twisting the clones’
minds?’, nor the mental trauma from The Phantom Menace wherein he
was replaced, failed his teacher who died in his arms but only after
saying ‘that kid what replaced you, you need to train him now,’
and then 10 years of raising a kid when he was literally just
sorta-kinda-not-exactly declared an adult himself. He was not
prepared for that.

So once Obi-Wan’s handed over Luke
(the last remaining link to his brother, who he is now not allowed
any contact with since Luke expresses he’s never really met Old
Ben) – that’s the first time he’s had to really stop and
breathe in over 13
years. Ten years to raise a responsibility he never asked for, was
not prepared to handle, and was a reminder of his greatest failure.
Three years of running at least a literal third of a galactic war
that was stacked against him (did he realize that by the end? That
they were being played, and could never have won?).

Yeah, he’s got 20 years to work at
recovering from that, but without a skilled therapist that I don’t
think you’re going to find on Tatooine, you’re going to be lucky
to be functional. I know that Star Wars as a whole doesn’t concern
itself with mental health (seriously, mind healers are becoming one
of my most cherished additions that Re-Entry brings to the table).
That doesn’t mean ignoring it will get you a good character assessment.

Depression and PTSD isn’t going to
make someone “a sad,
bitter, lonely man” nor
does it mean that one will metaphorically “be playing All By Myself
on repeat for 20 straight years while sobbing into a cup of Bantha
milk.” Depression expresses
itself in any number of ways. It can mute things, so that while you
laugh and even enjoy life, that joy doesn’t linger, or pales
quickly. It can add a haze to everything, so you feel numb and
distant. It can make someone who once expressed themselves
exuberantly seem calm instead of manic. It doesn’t have to affect
one’s wit, or habits of cracking jokes even if those jokes might
feel flat and hollow to the speaker.

Sometimes
it just leads to going through the motions of living, how one would
have approached things Before – but it’s just empty motions.

PTSD
can express itself as flashbacks. It can look like nothing until it
is
reactions to a different time and trauma instead of what is now and
present. It
can be a person haunted by their past, it can be explosive, it can be
quiet and turned inwards. There are days when it doesn’t hit you,
there are days when it’s so heavy on your shoulders that it feels
like all you can do is sit, stare at a wall, and hope your brain
shuts off. Then there are the days when despite that weight, you
still need to go get groceries, or make dinner, or fix a vaportator,
or fight off wayward Tuskens or something.

Nothing
says that depressed and traumatized Obi-Wan wouldn’t sometimes take
delight in lightsaber play, or practical jokes. I just don’t think
that it would overtake the depression and PTSD.

On
top of all of that is what
you get when
you take a look at the EU. Obi-Wan’s been traumatized since he was
a kid. He was bullied through his tweens. He was rejected by the ONLY
teacher he could hope to have until the Order booted him to the
AgroCorps, at least a week before the official deadline. Then that
shuttle crashed, and he saw his first major battle which led to
approximately FOUR HUNDRED dead.

At
not quite 13. Over the next year (probably less, but let’s be
generous), he had to deal with: kidnapping, enslavement and hard
labor, an attempted mind wipe, an actual war accompanied by
abandonment by his teacher, and
his teacher’s prior student trying to blow up his home. By the time
Phantom Menace rolls around, we can include: several more wars, 6
months to a year on the run across war-torn Mandalore trying to keep
a teenage Satine alive, taking responsibility for the death of
Qui-Gon’s Love Interest – and that’s just what’s off the top
of my head.

Y’know
what’s interesting? During Attack of the Clones, what I see is a
man just barely holding his shit together. That scene in Dex’s
Diner breaks me, because all I can think of is my time doing food
service while going through my own PTSD and depression – and I
recognize that empty smile he has for Dex. I know it’s all
interpretation, but I can’t help but think he’s faking that
smile. That sure, he means it: he’s happy to see a friend, he wants
to reassure him, but that doesn’t change the hollow inside that he
knows if he lets go and falls into it, he will never climb out.

The
war provided an alternative focus. It gave him clear, concrete goals:
beat back enemies here and here, keep as many of these people alive
as possible, here are resources and here are the end goals. He could
legitimately bond with brothers in arms who could grok black humor,
who wouldn’t look askance at someone covering long-standing grief
and discomfort with banter and flirting, “who
winked and witticized his way out of death and imprisonment a million
times, who always found something to laugh about or make fun of even
in the most difficult situations” – regardless of how inappropriate or relevant that might be to the circumstances.

Sometimes,
that laughter is all that keeps you from breaking from all the pain.

Yes,
people heal. Yes, he had 20 years to
work through
that trauma and injury. He’d
also be doing it alone, with a legacy of stoicism and philosophies
about releasing his emotions into the Force. The last major
friendships he had ended in betrayal in death, and people he depended on tended to either die or betray him.

That’s
not something you blithely overcome to play pranks on the locals
while watching over the kid of your best friend what you almost
killed as he was trying to kill you, like he killed most everyone
else you knew and loved. There is so much trauma and pain he’s had to see over the last 20 plus years, and Tatooine is the first time he ever gets to breathe and react.

If you want to write trickster archtype Obi-Wan, I applaud you. Without any sarcasm or mockery: you do you.

Meanwhile, I’ll be writing traumatized Old Ben.

(Many thanks to @morgynleri​ and @elegantmess-southernbelle​ who provided brilliant points and conversation, though I suspect I
phrased it with much less grace and coherency than they did)