A Simple Story – The Legend of Kanan Jarrus #RebelsRemembered

Hullo again, friends!

It’s been a while since The Elven Padawan has brought you anything new in the form of reading or listening material, but today we’re reemerging from the darkness to celebrate #RebelsRemembered: the anniversary of the finale of Star Wars Rebels, one of the best shows to ever grace our television screens and one of special significance to us here at TEP.

Not long ago, my good friend Lusa (who is also a huge supporter of TEP), told me she had something very special she’d written up in honor of Rebels, and particularly the character Kanan Jarrus. She sent it to me, wondering if I’d like to publish it here on the TEP blog, and once I read it I couldn’t wait to share it with you all!

So here it is: a special piece for #RebelsRemembered in honor of Kanan Jarrus, one of the greatest Jedi to live throughout the entirety of the Star Wars franchise. – Shay


A Simple Story

by Lusa

(A/N: I can’t take full credit for this. Shay actually started it on a chat group we’re in together, and I loved it and wrote more. Just wanna make sure she gets some credit!)

It was a small Jedi youngling named Caleb who first gave Obi-Wan the idea of recalibrating the signal to tell the Jedi to go into hiding.

A small Jedi Padawan who soon found himself receiving that message.

A small Jedi Padawan who found himself running through a forest, scared to death, completely alone and confused with his entire life and everything he had ever known crashing down around him.

A small Jedi Padawan who grew into a man.

A man who went for years with no purpose and no hope.

A man, once a small Jedi youngling, still alone but no longer frightened… or at least, not allowing himself to acknowledge fear.

A man, who after years of running through that forest, the forest of pain and bitterness, found himself with a home.

A man who became a leader.

A man people knew as Kanan.

A man who found himself in love. Real, true love. Not the kind that says it is love but walks away. Not even the kind that his Jedi master had given him as that small Jedi Padawan.

A man who sacrificed himself for that love. That love, and the love of his adopted family.

A family that was more real than any biological family could ever be.

A man — Caleb Dume, Kanan Jarrus — who found the moment in which he was most needed.

It had started in a lecture from Obi-Wan.

It grew into a simple story about a fallen knight.

No one ever thought it would end the way it did.

He found his purpose beyond what anyone ever imagined.

A simple story.

A small Jedi youngling named Caleb.

A fallen and risen knight named Kanan.

He became the spark that would light the fire that would burn the Empire down.

Experiencing a Different World

I love to read. I love to read many different kinds of books, from many different genres. But when I look at the shelf that holds my most-loved books, nearly all of them come from the fantasy genre. Filled with exciting stories of Hobbits, rabbits, and elves, even just glancing at the covers is enough to make me smile and feel excited. The heroes in these stories encourage me on bad days and cause me to be more determined on good ones. If fantasy didn’t exist, I’m sure I would still love to read, but until I started reading these types of books, I didn’t recognize how much impact characters and stories could have on people’s lives, for good or bad. Today, I am going to share the reasons fantasy is my favorite type of story to read.

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Join the Dark Side: An Exploration of Fictional Villains

One of the reasons I love fictional stories so much is that they remind me that Good will always win, no matter how hopeless the situation looks. But for it to do that, the characters need to be up against others who are constantly trying to stop them and discourage them. Sometimes, I feel like the bad guys of a story get foiled a little too easily, and while the “dumb sidekick/villain” character can be funny, I don’t enjoy seeing them very often. That’s not the kind of opposition we face in our daily lives. In this post, I’m going to talk about ways certain fictional bad guys stand out, whether all are redeemable, and ways writers have made me like some of them, even if I don’t agree with their actions. 

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We Need Your Help – Again! TEP’s Star Wars Animation Community Episode

Join in and share your love for Star Wars animation!

Many of our readers/listeners may remember when we put together a super fun “community episode” for the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. I sent out questions to various other fellow Star Wars fans, and you recorded your answers (many of you using nothing more than a simple smartphone recorder app) and sent the files back to me. I edited them into a cool news channel-style-interview style compilation and viola! One awesome listener response episode of The Elven Padawan: From Erebor to Echo Base was released for the world to hear!

Now we’re back to the present, and Star Wars Rebels has recently wrapped up its run on Disney XD, Star Wars Resistance is beginning in the fall, and despite all the odds stacked clear to the Death Star and back against the possibility, The Clone Wars is finally returning to finish the way it was always meant to. And we’re still seeing new shorts in the Forces of Destiny series being dropped every few months.

So I had a thought: what better time to try another community episode, this time to celebrate all the past, present, and future of Star Wars animation??

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brOTPs 4ever: The Best Fictional Friendships

My fangirl friends and I spend a good deal of time talking about our favorite ships, or how much we love the father-son relationship between Tony Stark and Peter Parker, but today I’m here to talk about a different kind of relationship: the best friend kind. I feel like this kind of awesome relationship can get a little overlooked in the middle of all the other kinds of relationships. Not that I don’t love talking about the other kinds of dynamics, but friendships are really important and deserve more attention. In a way, any healthy relationship could be considered a BrOTP (the fandom term for a best-friend pairing,) in that they all involve teamwork and loving another person. And whether characters were immediately kindred spirits or unlikely comrades, every friendship requires hard work, but every friendship is worth it.

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Book Review – Star Wars: Tarkin by James Luceno

Today I am back to talk about another book, Star Wars: Tarkin, written by James Luceno. This book is very different from any Star Wars book I’ve ever read. Usually, the stories I read are centered around the good guys, characters that inspire you, and who you can empathize with pretty easily. This book, however, centers on a cold, brilliant, Imperial. Wilhuff Tarkin isn’t my very least-favorite character, that spot has always been for the real evil characters, the manipulators, who corrupt those who may have otherwise been decent people. But Tarkin has still always seemed kind of bland to me. Smarter than most Imperials, but still stone-faced, impeccably clothed, and well, kind of boring. Not to mention cruel. So the questions I had when I started it were: “Will this book help me see Tarkin as more of a complex character? Will understanding him make me dislike him any less?”

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Audrey Reads The Silmarillion

This week, I delved deeper into Middle-earth history and lore, and read The Silmarillion. I have had this book since Easter, and had read a few chapters of it, but was distracted by other books, and a little intimidated by all the characters and places in it. And there are A LOT of characters. But I realized that even if I couldn’t name all of Fëanor’s sons, I could still enjoy the book, and learning the history that came before the tales of Bilbo and Frodo. In this post, I’m going to give some of my thoughts on it and give some introductions to the main characters.

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LIGHTPORTER by C. B. Cook!! Blog Tour + Review!

LIGHTPORTER, IDIA BOOK #2, IS OUT TODAY!!!

Now I know I’ve been doing a lot of not-Star Wars and not-Tolkien things on this blog lately, even though the reason this site exists is to share the love of those two fandoms with the world. But I do like to sometimes take a light break from Star Wars and Tolkien in related stories, and the IDIA books are definitely worth it. Besides, C. B. Cook, the author of this superhero series, is a huge fangirl, so it totally counts!!

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My Favorite People in A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Obsessing over fictional characters is one of my favorite things to do. Their sacrifices and heroism inspire me, and their mistakes teach other lessons while making me love them more because I can often relate to their weak moments. I like analyzing why they make the choices they do in order to understand them better, which also helps me empathize with other people. Sometimes I can easily tell who is going to be my favorite character as soon as I see them, other times it takes a while for them to grow on me. But once I decide I love a character, it’s not often I change my mind. My list of favorite characters is very long, so in this post, I will be limiting it to a few of my favorites from the Star Wars universe. And these are in no particular order of favorites because it is very hard for me to rank characters, other than Leia, Han, and Luke who are usually my top favorites.

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