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Obi-Wan Kenobi was old. Like, really old. Anakin knew this because he had streaks of gray at the edges of his temple and he was completely helpless when it came to using his comm. Every time he sent Anakin a message, he always misused emoticons and abbreviations. Once, Anakin received a message from him that said: “Unfortunately, you failed your Diplomacy II final exam. :D“ When he questioned Obi-Wan about this, Obi-Wan had simply looked at him blankly and said “I thought that was a D for diplomacy, not a smiley face. Otherwise why would there be two dots next to it?”
“Those are the eyes,” Anakin had insisted.
But Obi-Wan had just smiled and wagged his finger. “No, no, Padawan. Those are two dots to represent the second level of Diplomacy. You can’t trick me.”
Anakin gave up then.
Abbreviations weren’t any better either. Anytime Anakin started using too many abbreviations in a message to his Master, Obi-Wan would start responding solely in abbreviations. So a response from him should have looked like this:
“Please meet me for lunch in the southwest corner of the dining hall nearest to the crèche.”
But instead turned out like this:
“PMMFLITSCOTDHNTTC.”
Obi-Wan’s rationale for this was that he just assumed Anakin could understand what he meant, since Anakin always assumed Obi-Wan knew what he was saying when he used abbreviations himself. He did not seem to understand that a certain level of mutual context was required. And so abbreviations became a lost cause too. The only one Obi-Wan could consistently use was “MTFBWY :)” for “May the Force be with you :)” which upon learning he then attached to the end of every single email and comm message he sent, no matter how official it was supposed to be. Anakin once saw him sign off a message to the Supreme Chancellor that way. Good thing Anakin had his comm number and could smooth over any diplomatic mishaps before they happened.
And GIFs… Well, the less said about those, the better. Anakin stopped sending them to him after the fifth consecutive minute of watching his Master tap on the message on his comm. When asked, Obi-Wan said he was “trying to get the video to play, but it doesn’t seem to be working, there’s no sound.” Anakin attempted to explain that it wasn’t a video, just a moving series of images, but Obi-Wan’s only response to that had been to look blankly at him and say, “But I can’t pause it either.”
Needless to say, that had been the end of that as well.
So yes, Anakin had come to the very obvious conclusion that Obi-Wan Kenobi was completely, horribly inept with these sorts of things. That was part of the reason that Anakin had rescinded his objections to having Ahsoka become his Padawan. Because if he didn’t, then Ahsoka would be Obi-Wan’s Padawan, and that would be horrible. Obi-Wan didn’t understand the youths. He would corrupt her. She would probably start using proper spelling and everything.
No, it was very good that he and Ahsoka were paired together. They understood each other. And if part of that understanding involved knowing the best way to blow off steam post-battle, then who was to judge?
As if on cue, Obi-Wan’s voice appeared from behind them, clashing with the background music they had playing.
“What are you doing, Anakin?”
Anakin froze in the middle of a pose, Ahsoka following suit. Then he groaned and clicked on his comm to stop both the recording and the background track. “Master, you’re ruining our videos!”
Not unexpectedly, this earned him a raised eyebrow and a skeptical look. “What sort of videos?”
Ahsoka, currently being about as helpful as a dead fish, remained silent. Anakin did his Masterly duty and fell on the lightsaber instead.
“SpaceTok videos.”
Obi-Wan blinked slowly. “Space… Tok?”
Anakin sighed and turned to face his former Master. “Obi-Wan, do you know what something called ‘social media’ is?”
Obi-Wan appeared to be contemplating every single life choice that had led him to that moment. “No, Anakin, please enlighten me as to what social media is.”
Anakin didn’t have a definition prepared, so he tried to wing it. “It’s like… sharing. But over the HoloNet? Like, you post things. And send them. And then other people can see, and stuff. Like… yeah.”
“I see,” said Obi-Wan.
Somehow Anakin doubted that, even though his explanation was pretty brilliant. “It’s okay, Master, I’ll find some video explanations and send them to you.”
“Oh, I won’t be able to watch, I can’t turn the sound on my comm on.”
Anakin frowned. “Give it here, let me see.” Obi-Wan obligingly handed it over. It took Anakin less than three seconds to diagnose and fix the problem. “Master, you had it turned to silent,” he said, giving it back. “None of your notifications were making noise either. Is that why you’ve been ignoring all my messages recently?”
“Must be,” said Obi-Wan. “Anyway, so what are you doing with this SpaceTok contraption again?”
Finally Ahsoka chimed in. “We’re making dance videos, Master Obi-Wan!”
“And you’re just… sending these to everyone?”
They nodded.
“Well,” Obi-Wan said, smile turning that sort of fake-gracious he usually only used on politicians. “Don’t let me stop you. Start from the top.”
Anakin suddenly grew nervous. “I’m sure you must be busy, we don’t want to keep you. We were just finishing up, actually.”
Ahsoka whirled on him. “No we weren’t! You still haven’t gotten the bnorking part down!”
“I have too!” Anakin insisted.
“Have not,” Ahsoka said, crossing her arms and glaring up at him. “You call what you were doing before bnorking? It looked like you were having a seizure.”
Anakin’s mouth dropped open. The disrespect! Padmé loved his bnorking. She found it very sexy, or so she told him when he asked for the third time.
“Well fine, then!” Anakin stomped up to his comm and started the music once more. “Let’s try again!”
The latest and greatest technobeats filled the air as the pair cycled back through the most recent dance craze. Anakin kept a count in his head and a smile frozen on his face as he went through the motions. Jump, dip, twist, pop, arms, bow, wave, up, bnork—
But Ahsoka stopped the music halfway through. “No, no, it’s all wrong, Master.”
Anakin froze in his last position. “What? No, I’m doing it right!”
Ahsoka threw her hands up in exasperation. “If that’s a bnork, then I’m a Jedi Master!”
Anakin straightened. “Well, we’ve got a real live Jedi Master right here, let’s ask him what he thinks!”
But when they turned they saw that Obi-Wan, for his part, looked bleaker than death.
“…Obi-Wan?” Anakin asked hesitantly. “Are you alright?”
But if Obi-Wan could hear him, he gave no sign. He simply backed away slowly, muttering something about figuring out if it was possible to revoke a Knighting.
Anakin winced. Well, it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d traumatized his Master. Really, it wasn’t Anakin’s fault that Obi-Wan didn’t understand what it was like to be young. He’d been ancient forever. Force, when Anakin met him, he was already… Well, he was twenty-five, which… come to think of it, wasn’t all that far off from Anakin’s twenty-one years of age… Something must happen to people in those four years to turn them old, Anakin decided. But it wouldn’t happen to him. No. He’d stay young and virile forever.
But perhaps there was something in the air that was causing him to feel older by the minute, because every time he interacted with Ahsoka, he felt more and more gray-haired. The latest incident came when they were reviewing a series of campaign plans on her holocomm. A notification popped up and he read it before she was able to swipe it away.
NEW HYYP FROM: multeatasking
anyone else ever want to take a bunch of cold medicine and go to an aquarium but they’re scared to because what if the medicine makes them get emotionally vulnerable with a fish and then the most recent thing they were emotionally vulnerable to was a fish
“What the fuck,” Anakin said.
“Whoops, sorry, ignore that,” Ahsoka said, quickly bringing up the holomaps again. “Sorry, go on? Something about the structural integrity of the base level?”
“No, no, no, what the fuck was that.”
Ahsoka blinked. “Uh… A Hyyper notification?”
“A Hyyper notification.”
“Yeah,” Ahsoka said. “It’s like, a social media platform? Like you can post stuff on there and—“
“I know what Hyyper is, Ahsoka,” Anakin said through gritted teeth. He wasn’t old. “I mean what the fuck kind of Hyyp was that.”
“Oh.” Ahsoka looked sheepish. “Uh, it’s just this one account I follow? It’s really funny. Here, look.” She pulled up the profile and began scrolling through it. Dozens of Hyyps began flashing by, Anakin could only catch a few of them.
multeatasking:
my kid has a toy ship that says “help is on the way!” and he keeps it in his room and sometimes at night i sit on his floor in the dark and press the button so it makes the noise just so i can feel something
multeatasking:
just told my son i was going to do chores around the house but really i had some leftover cake and didn’t want to share
multeatasking:
some alien dude approaching me on a new planet: take me to your leader
me: uh i’m the leader
alien dude: oh, really?? huh. anyway—
me: why didnt you think i was the leader
alien dude: no no,
me: why
multeatasking:
nobody:
absolutely nobody:
not a single soul:
my kid to me in public: why are you so ugly looking sometimes
multeatasking:
sometimes i lie awake at night thinking about the one time as a little kid that i accidentally squeezed a tooka’s face too hard and it hissed and ran away and i was so sad that i cried but not because i was mad the tooka left but because i felt so bad for what’d i’d done even if it wasn’t on purpose i think about that and it makes me cry again i’m cryign righ
multeatasking:
the senate is like that one episode of galactic days of our lives when they go to the town council meeting and it ends in rotten fruit being thrown around because everyone brought that with them for some reason iykyk
multeatasking:
have just convinced son that i do not know about his very obvious girlfriend. i am an Actor. i am Built For The Stage.
multeatasking:
actual conversation between me and my son yesterday:
him: hey dad how are you doing today?
me, internally: we have reached the stage where we can talk about our emotions to each other. i am so proud. i am so happy. what a big step.
me, out loud: well, to be honest, i’m feeling kind of—
him: sorry, i’m kind of on a deadline here, i’m short twenty credits for a life-size replica of bonecrusher IV from the galactigons, could you spot me
“Heh,” Anakin chuckled, looking up from the holocomm. “I just got a life-size replica of Bonecrusher IV from The Galactigons and I had to grab some credits from Obi-Wan for it too.”
Then he blinked. “Wait.” Ahsoka watched him carefully out of the corner of her eyes. “The guy I bought it from said it was the only one in the galaxy! I knew I got scammed!”
Ahsoka muttered something under her breath about there being other conclusions he could draw from this but he paid her no mind, deep in the Hyyper feed once more.
But the more he went on, the more he got a sense of deja vu. There were alarm bells starting to ring in the back of his mind, and it all came to a head with this Hyyper:
multeatasking:
fatherhood is when you wake up in your son’s house and find him in his kitchen being so out of it from sleep deprivation that he’s trying to fry a sock on the stove for breakfast and then when you try to turn off the stove and rescue his poor sock he goes ballistic and tells you that he was “BASTING it for FLAVOR”
Anakin’s eyes narrowed. He started storming down the hallway, Ahsoka’s comm firmly in his hand.
“Hey!” Ahsoka shouted after him, running to catch up. “Where are you going?”
“I need to talk to Obi-Wan about this!”
He could feel alarm spike through their bond, but Anakin was too fast for his Padawan. He made it to Obi-Wan’s quarters and barged right in.
“Obi-Wan! I need to talk to you!”
The man himself was sitting on one of his floor cushions, typing furiously away at the comm in his hand. He looked up as the door crashed open, but didn’t set down his comm.
“Oh, hello Anakin,” Obi-Wan said pleasantly. “How can I help you?”
Anakin didn’t waste any time. “I think there’s some sort of spy in the Temple.”
An eyebrow raised on Obi-Wan’s forehead. “My. That’s quite serious. What makes you think so?”
Ahsoka screeched to a halt at Anakin’s side, panting. Anakin paid her no mind.
“There’s this guy on Hyyper who knows too much!” He brandished his comm. “He’s got a bunch of stuff on here that’s way too close to be coincidental! I think he’s spying on me and you!”
“Me too?” Obi-Wan frowned. “What makes you think so?”
Anakin ran his hand through his hair angrily. “You remember the sock incident? The one you swore to never tell anyone about?”
It must have been his imagination that Obi-Wan looked slightly guilty. “…I do.”
“Well, this guy knows about it! He must have cameras somewhere!”
Without waiting for Obi-Wan’s response, Anakin began going through all the cupboards, drawers, and corners in the room, searching for some tiny camera or recording device hidden somewhere. Obi-Wan did not seem too concerned, just going back to whatever he was doing on his comm.
Ahsoka’s comm pinged a few times in a row, but Anakin only noticed when she started giggling.
“What?” He demanded.
“Nothing, Master!” Her attempt to be seriousness was belayed by the fact that she was still laughing.
He grabbed her comm from her, ignoring her half-hearted protests, and looked down at the screen at her notifications.
NEW HYYP FROM: multeatasking
its over guys son has found my account
NEW HYYP FROM: multeatasking
LMAO nvm he’s not the fastest ship in the hyperlane he doesn’t get it still
NEW HYYP FROM: multeatasking
i think im gonna have an aneurysm from trying so hard not to laugh if no one hears from me in the next five minutes send emergency services to the jedi temple pls
Anakin’s mind whirred, going lightning fast. “Master, I…” The dots finally connected in his brain. He looked at Obi-Wan, who was frozen in the corner. “Master, I think I have not just a spy but a stalker. He’s clearly obsessed with me and thinks of me like his son. And he’s somehow infiltrated the Jedi Temple. He’s here right now! I have to go try to stop him!”
And so Anakin whirled around on his feet and left right back the way he came, intent on stopping the threat once and for all.
Back in Obi-Wan’s quarters, Ahsoka was smirking at her grandmaster. “I really thought you were gonna gain a new follower today.”
Obi-Wan sighed. “I don’t know what else I can do at this point. Next time he comms me should I pretend I don’t understand how he’s speaking through a machine and ask him to step out of the tiny metal box?”
Ahsoka shrugged slowly. “I don’t know, I think that one might honestly break him once and for all. You can’t go too hard on him. He’s good for the war effort or something.”
Reluctance dripped from Obi-Wan's every pore. He finally let out a breath and stood up, putting his hands into his sleeves. "Well, I’ll give him a few more minutes of running around like a porg with its head cut off before I send my next Hyyp. I’ve got a good one planned.”
NEW HYYP FROM: multeatasking
im under ur bed
