#and this post isn't meant to minimize anyone else's experiences either

[your-mom-friend]

*grabs your face and smushes your cheeks* listen to me

I am about to tell you things you need to understand. You ready for this?

You are average. You, darling, are an average human being. Another statistic. one among billions.

Isn't that wonderful? Let me explain

Think about all those posts you've seen thus far. All those weird little quirks or anxious thoughts you've had. Somewhere you've likely seen someone else expressing that they've done that too. Look at how many notes those posts have. Hundreds? Thousands? Your experience is not unique.

It's not unique!! Do you understand what that means? It means you've never been alone! You've never ever been alone and all over the world are people who have experienced exactly what you did!

Your intrusive thoughts do not make you immoral! Your impulsive thoughts do not make you dangerous or stupid! You don't have to feel bad about the bad thoughts because look! That silly tumblr post had an actual person behind it and they talked about it and look! Tens of thousands of people agree with them! You've never been alone!

You know what else that means? You can reverse engineer this shit! Now that you now just how average you are, you can use this! No one's going to care that your hair isn't perfect! You know why? Because you wouldn't care if you saw that on someone else! You would maybe notice but you wouldn't judge them as harshly as you do yourself!

Don't get me wrong. Everyone is unique. But it is not our experiences that make us unique. It is not the existence of such experiences that make us unique. It is the arrangement of experiences, the sum of them, the reaction of them and the number of them that make up who we are. It is your gorgeous gorgeous brain that truly makes you unique. It is the way you think and feel and react to the human condition that makes you so uniquely you. But darling, you don't ever have to worry about being alone. Because in one space or another your particular experience is common enough to talk about.

Don't be afraid of helping people! Some people are anxious about helping people. They fear they are overstepping a social boundary by helping a stranger when they haven't asked for it. Some may react negatively. They might take offense. But don't let this deter you! You are one among millions and so are they. But you may be among different millions. Do not lose the ability to help people in the fear that they might take it the wrong way.

If you were struggling, say, with filling out some bank forms. Too anxious to ask someone to help you because well what if they judge you? But think about it from their perspective. If someone were to come up to you, clearly embarrassed, asking for some help to fill out some forms because they don't understand, would you turn them down, if you could help it? If you new how to help them, would you turn them down? Probably not. Which means, that if you ask someone, they probably won't turn you down either. Or if you see someone struggling silently. What would you do if you were in their situation and someone lent you a hand? Would you judge them for trying to help? if, in this case, you wouldn't, then they probably wouldn't either. Don't be afraid to lend a hand.

My personal saying is that you should, whenever possible, try to be someone good that happened in someone's day. Be that guy that stopped to help someone pick up fallen groceries. Be the girl that talked to that old security guard that is usually ignored. Ask him things. Be the kid that helped a girl fill in her first debit card application. Be the guy that made silly faces at a kid on the bus to entertain them on a boring ride. Be someone that gets fondly recounted to parents or friends when someone talks about their day.

[whorevader]

@oxerdyde

Hey, guess who didn't say that abuse should be minimized and doesn't like it when people imply she did? Guess who has responded to plenty of people who accused her of such in as understanding as possible way explaining that she was drawing a line and arguing against the comparison of the experience of violent systematic oppression by a literal slave with a very restricted support system with the personal traumas of someone who is otherwise privileged and had a stable support system until he (regardless of whether you blame him personally or otherwise) became a legitimate active threat to the people around him? Guess who never called the character anything other than not-a-slave, which is true (and I will not stand for arguments for figurative interpretations of the word in a canon that has literal representations)?

I have tried to be courteous when responding to character stans, despite the fact that stan/anti culture as a whole doesn't agree with me. But I have addressed these exact accusations multiple times in the past, and I have done so to the, reported, satisfaction of those who had taken issue with me, regardless of whether we agreed or not about the characters on the whole. (The only reason I really bothered to respond in length this time, is because you're one of those special stans who like to pretend that I'm some sort of abuse apologist for clarifying that the theory that Kylo Ren was brainwashed by Snoke is speculation based on intentionally vague non-film content and nonspecific lines within the films. Until the films or other related products directly address the level of influence that Snoke had on Kylo Ren, I'm not going to react to him as though he's an intentionally represented abuse victim. If he's ever confirmed to have undergone brainwashing or suffering, I might see the character himself differently, even if his creation and the intent by which he was created still leaves me unimpressed. I will not let you just paint me as somehow erasing, neglecting, or minimizing abuse that has not been canonically confirmed, yet if ever.)

You replied to my post, rather than reblogging it with an addition or simply vague-posting about it on your own blog - nobody else gets notified about those but me, the op. Tumblr isn't a hivemind, even if some people like to pretend it is, so unless you're just leaving a... digital post-it note of sorts to shame anyone who happens to go through the notes and dislikes your preferred character, then I have to assume you're looking to somehow start shit with me. So clearly you're looking to either start a conflict, or make some sort of point. That's fine, and I don't mind discussing my views with people, even hostile ones, so, you know, let's talk, I guess.

Except... we won't have much to chat about. Whether you're right and I'm wrong or neither of us or both of us has a point, it doesn't really matter in that regard. Because I have already responded to the point you made, and I am no longer in the habit of repeating myself over and over to random bloggers that stumble onto this complaint almost a year after I first posted it. I could just refer you to the other replies I've made, but seeing as you don't even have to look very far on my blog to find it, and my replies are visible in the notes of the post, I'm not sure handing you a link and baby stepping you through finding the answers would work.

So, yeah, to sum up, you're not the first person to supposedly call me out for something I never insinuated, or meant to insinuate if you really feel otherwise, and yours is by far not the best argument I've seen against my point (partially because you don't even bother to address my actual point). But you decided, because I dared to suggest that another character may have experienced a sort of trauma or oppression that your preferred fictional character didn't, to, uh, idk, the reply really reads more like its own anti anti post than any sort of coherent response to my very short original post, if that's even the version you were replying to.

Point is, I can't really tell what your end goal was, other than to make a point that's already been put away. This got super rambley, but hey, you pissed me off, and I wanted to vent. If you care about earnest and friendly discussion of morality, psychology, and trauma in this stupid, messy franchise that I unfortunately love, I'd be open to it, but if you're just gonna spit out bullet points I've already covered publically, I think I'll just block you? So, you know, if you care to, clarify whatever it is in your reply that you think I've neglected to address in other posts, or get mad and spam me with stuff that's already been covered, and if neither of those sound good, just ignore my response and we'll both forget this ever happened in like, two or three days. Thanks for reading, if you did. If you didn't bother, cool, I hope you leave me alone then.

Stop comparing Anakin Skywalker, who was born into actual slavery, to Ben Solo, who felt threatened once