#Like yeah there's a lot of shipping stuff but it's not nearly as pervasive and toxic as I feared it'd be and it's actually pretty nice?

[setaflow]

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[rocket-sith]

The "BPD Anakin" Theory is Overlooking Some Crucial Shit - a long rambly meta objection

Suiting up in my flame proof armor for this one, but submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society jury…

The BPD Anakin theory is gundark bollocks. 

I’ve seen this theory getting bandied about a lot, and it’s never sat quite right with me. It finally clicked that the reason why it doesn’t sit right is because the entire argument is hinged upon ignoring nearly all the situational and cultural factors in Anakin’s world, and “diagnosing” him in a vacuum. This is tantamount to arresting someone for yelling FIRE! in a crowded theater when there actually is a fire. 

Simply put, a lot of the defenses I’ve seen of the theory fail to take into account that in order for a disorder to be present, the person’s thoughts and behaviors have to actually be disordered, and they also have to be pervasive. Patterns of thought and behavior that are reasonable within context are not disordered. (If someone’s yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater, it’s not unreasonable if there actually is a fire.) Thoughts and behaviors that we don’t see until the tail end of RotS where Sidious has manipulated Anakin into what can only be described as a psychological break are not pervasive. (I’d also argue that some of them aren’t even really Anakin’s - he’s a victim of gaslighting, both by Palpatine AND the Jedi Order. Not that it excuses what he did, but abuse victims who’ve been mentally and emotionally manipulated can display behaviors that deceptively mimic various mental illnesses. And TBH the Jedi Order was really just a fancy religious cult that responded to Anakin’s very normal, very human need for love and acceptance with pretty much the Jedi equivalent of “stop having impure thoughts or you’re gonna go to hell” - which really didn’t help matters.)

And for the sake of clarity here, let me go ahead and establish a couple of things. 1) I’m talking about Anakin while he was still Anakin. Vader is a different entity in a lot of ways, and that’s an entirely different discussion. Most of the BPD stuff I’ve seen has been focused on PT and TCW Anakin, so that’s what I’m working with here. 2) I’m absolutely not arguing that Anakin is some shining paragon of perfect mental health, or that he’s necessarily neurotypical in the first place, because yeah NO. He absolutely has some issues he needs to deal with, and as far as neurotypical-ness goes, I’ve seen some pretty convincing cases for ADHD, PTSD, generalized anxiety, and even high functioning autism. I’m only arguing that BPD doesn’t fit. So let’s go through the diagnostic criteria for BPD, keeping the above in mind.

(If you're on mobile, the rest of the post is here. Hellsite app hides the Read More. https://rocket-sith.tumblr.com/post/158218862776/the-bpd-anakin-theory-is-overlooking-some ) 

*frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment*

Okay, so picture this. You’re in the middle of an ongoing war, and you’re fighting on the front lines. All your friends are in the war too, and many of them are right there on the front lines with you. Your spouse is a high-profile politician with powerful enemies, and he/she has faced assassination attempts before. Your mother is living in a hostile land as a slave, where it’s commonplace to be killed or abused.

Tell me your fear of losing the people you love is irrational. Go ahead, tell me that’s not a 100% justified fear. I’ll wait.

We see in Crystal Crisis that Anakin feels abandoned by Ahsoka when she left, but she actually did leave. That wasn’t an irrational fear. She left. Anakin stood by her, not thinking she’d leave, and she left anyway, which clearly shocked him. It’s totally fair to say he’s being short-sighted in his reaction, in that the council was the ones he should be mad at, not her, but if irrational fear of abandonment is what we’re looking for here, there simply wasn’t any in this case. The possibility of her leaving never even occurred to him before the council scene in the Wrong Jedi arc, and when she did leave, he was upset, but he was upset at something that actually happened, not irrationally fearing something that might.

Anakin gets mad at Obi-Wan for leaving him out of the loop in the TCW Deception arc, but getting mad at your supposed best friend for faking his own death in order to emotionally manipulate a reaction out of you…I mean, damn, who *wouldn’t* feel pissed off and betrayed by that? And even THEN, he never thought Obi-Wan was the one behind it until Obi-Wan told him point blank that it was his idea to leave Anakin out of the loop. Anakin’s immediate reaction to finding out Obi-Wan was alive wasn’t “Obi-Wan abandoned me and was conspiring against me” it was “the council doesn’t trust me.” The thought that Obi-Wan was in on it doesn’t even cross his mind as a possibility. 

Then we have the incident with Padme and Clovis where Anakin walks in and starts to whup Clovis’s ass. A lot of people like to point to this as irrational possessiveness taken to the point of violence, but again, we’re overlooking a few things here. Padme has had attempts made on her life before. The person she’s trying to lure is a known slimeball. And when Anakin busts into the room, he doesn’t see Padme making googly eyes at Clovis. He sees Clovis trying to physically force himself on Padme while she says no. This is not Anakin walking in on his wife flirting with someone, this is Anakin walking in on a known scuzzbucket doing something to Padme that looks an awful lot like sexual assault. No shit, he lost his cool! 

The “everyone’s abandoned me and turned against me” mindset isn’t something we see until the tail end of RotS on Mustafar. Not pervasive. And given Obi-Wan actually was there to kill him, it’s not particularly disordered either. He did incorrectly assume Padme had brought Obi-Wan there, but considering 1) Palpatine had planted the idea in Anakin’s head that there was something under-the-table going on between Padme and Obi-Wan, and 2) Obi-Wan really had just shown up on Padme’s ship looking to throw down and start shit, it’s not like Padme bringing Obi-Wan there to whup Anakin’s ass was some random, wild idea that just popped into Anakin’s head of its own accord, manifested purely by his own insecurities. It was a conclusion reached by combining something that was actually true (Obi-Wan had arrived on Mustafar via Padme’s ship with the intention of fighting or killing Anakin) with something that had been deliberately planted in his head by a malevolent, manipulative third party (Obi-Wan and Padme were in cahoots about something sketchy). I am not in any way, shape, or form defending the way Anakin handled it, but I am saying the suspicion itself isn’t mere left-field paranoia born of nothing but a fear of abandonment. *a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation*

Anakin is emotionally intense, sure, and he comes off the rails when one of his loved ones is in danger, but I do not see instability in his relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation of the people he loves. Anakin is a steadfastly loyal person, and he doesn’t do the push-pull thing. Let’s look at the people he’s closest to - his mother, Padme, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, Rex, and Palpatine. 

- Mom and Rex - there’s never anything even remotely turbulent with either of these two regarding how Anakin views and feels about them. He’s unwaveringly loyal to both, never once devalues either, and there’s no push/pull here at all.

- Ahsoka - he’s overprotective of her sometimes, but she’s a young teenager in a war zone entrusted to his care. The only time we ever see him slagging her off is when he’s ranting to Obi-Wan in the Crystal Crisis arc, mad at her for leaving. That’s it. One instance hardly constitutes “pervasive” or “alternating” and we can’t forget, this wasn’t a fear about things that might happen, or Anakin saying she was Jerky McJerkface because she disagreed with his opinion of loth-cats or something. This was a reaction to her actually leaving, which was a huge, life-altering thing for Anakin that hurt him very deeply - especially since he did stay unwaveringly loyal to her even when no one else was. He’s definitely guilty of not grasping the big picture here, but again - not pervasive, not alternating, no history of devaluing Ahsoka or thinking she was going to abandon him for no good reason.

- Obi-Wan - Okay, the Anakin/Obi-Wan dynamic is complex. These two clowns are both masters at miscommunication and not understanding each other for shit despite the fact that they clearly adore each other, but again. A teenager bickering with his guardian and ranting to his friends about how much he dislikes being nitpicked and dislikes rules (AotC) is typical of every teenager everywhere, and it’s not at all contradictory for a teenager to do this even though they love their guardian. It’s 100% normal. A person being angry when a friend lies to them and manipulates them is a rational reaction (TCW Deception), and if ANYONE is guilty of disordered behavior here, it’s Obi-Wan with his shocking lack of empathy. Anakin didn’t come off the rails with the whole “Obi-Wan isn’t really my friend, he’s out to get me” deal until the tail end of RotS, when Obi-Wan really was out to get Anakin. We don’t see anything remotely like that before then. We see a teenager frustrated with rules, we see an adult upset at being lied to and manipulated, and we see some mutual communication SNAFUs, but we don’t see turbulent, foundationless devaluing. 

- Padme - Both Anakin and Padme are very young considering their roles in life, and their relationship can be rocky and immature sometimes. (And not just on Anakin’s part - there was a TCW ep where Anakin had to cut an evening with Padme short to go do Jedi Business and when he showed up the Senate building later to talk to her, she greeted him with an icy “Oh, so now you have time for me?”) Anakin has some jealousy issues, and I’m not going to insult anyone’s intelligence by pretending he doesn’t, but he does not devalue Padme or think she’s against him until the end of RotS - and we’ve already covered that incident.  There are absolutely some unhealthy things about the relationship (even before Mustafar), but it doesn’t fit with the BPD criteria here or indicate he’s in the habit of devaluing Padme as a person. 

- Palpatine - Well hell, Anakin’s main problem here was that he was blindly loyal! If Anakin had mistrusted Palpatine at all or pushed him away, a lot of really bad shit wouldn’t have happened. 

*identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self image or sense of self*

Anakin is absolutely struggling to find his place in the galaxy, but again - self discovery and finding out who you are is a normal part of being teenager and young adult. Not disordered. The Jedi are a batshit cult who try to convince Anakin that his normal, healthy, human emotions are dangerous, and he understandably gets frustrated by it. This isn’t a dysfunction on Anakin’s part, and labeling it as such is fairly abusive in its own right. One of the key elements of gaslighting is when you abuse a person and then blame them for their negative reaction to it. Jedi dogma tries to convince Anakin he’s defective and untrustworthy for having totally normal emotions, and now we’re going to say he’s disordered for reacting to it with anger and confusion? I think we’re fighting in the wrong corner, y'all. And anyways, Anakin doesn’t completely come off the rails with his “the Jedi are evil” deal until the tail end of RotS - not pervasive. 

*impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating).*

Anakin gets dinged for this one a lot in the BPD Anakin theories, and this is one of those areas where we need to take into account that Anakin does not live in our world.  Yes, Anakin is a daredevil. However, acting like you have superpowers isn’t disordered if you actually have superpowers. You wouldn’t call Clark Kent self-destructive for thinking he could jump in front of a bullet. You wouldn’t call Wolverine irrational for thinking he could heal from a wound that would be fatal to anyone else. So it makes no sense to call Anakin self-damaging for acting like he’s some sort of badass super pilot who can deflect blaster fire with a lightsaber.  *recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior*  - None of this applies at all, unless we’re talking about general daredevil stuff, and then - see above. 

*affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)*

This one’s iffy, especially when you’re dealing with someone who’s constantly in the front lines of a war zone, as it calls into question whether anxiety and irritability are disordered in this context. Anakin definitely seems to be anxious and irritable, but he and the people he loves are constantly in harm’s way. You could definitely make a case for PTSD here, but BPD doesn’t fit considering there are very real, very legitimate causes for anxiety and irritability. 

*chronic feelings of emptiness* I haven’t seen any direct canonical evidence to support this. 

*inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger*

LMAO okay, y'all can have this one. Homeboy’s got some anger management issues. (I still say a lot of the time when he’s pissed off, he’s got a good reason to be, but DAMN he does a shitty job of handling it in a remotely constructive way.)

*transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms*

Nope. It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you, ya know? He thinks the council doesn’t trust him. They *don’t* and they’ve never been shy about showing it. He thinks his mother is being tortured to death. She *is*, and prophetic dreams are a real thing in Anakin’s universe, and a power that Anakin has been canonically confirmed to possess. He has premonitions of Padme dying in childbirth. Again, he is canonically confirmed to have the power of prophecy, and the *last* time he ignored a prophetic dream, it cost his mother her life. Taking his dreams seriously is not paranoia, and it’s not him having a dissociative episode. (Yeah, there’s a fan theory that Palpatine planted the Padme dream in Anakin’s head, but even so, that’s not evidence of a disorder with Anakin. It’s more like the equivalent of a forensics expert planting extremely convincing fake evidence at a crime scene, then blaming the cops when they think it’s real.)

So there are the 9 symptoms. You need five or more for a BPD diagnosis. Anakin has ONE. *Maybe* two if you squint really hard and tilt your head. If Anakin were a regular adult human on regular earth who wasn’t in a war zone, wasn’t caught up in a crazy religious order that was shaming him for being human, and wasn’t being manipulated by a goddamn Sith Lord, it would be another matter. But he is, and it’s not accurate to diagnose mental disorders while completely ignoring cultural factors and extenuating circumstances like being a General on the front lines of a war or being preyed upon by a master manipulator. 

tl;dr - The “BPD Anakin” theory might seem reasonable at first glance, but it holds significantly less water when we stop pulling Anakin out of his own environment and either analyzing him in a vacuum, or analyzing him against the backdrop of our own world rather than in the context of *his* world, his environment, and his reality in a galaxy far, far away.