#fox: it was mostly palpatine who did it the worst of it

[wantonlywindswept]

Hi I just wanted to let you know that i absolutely love Defib. I've been reading your forgotten fox writing and was wondering if Defib has had any issues getting Commander Vertex into medical for any routine appointments so the medics can make sure he stays "uninjured" while working with the guard?(if theres been time for any yet?)

Glad you're enjoying, anon!

So there was actually a period of time between Fox being cursed and then rejoining the Guard as Vertex, and during that time a lot of shit that the Guard normally has to put up with got smacked down, and the Senate Guard and CSF were forced to actually start doing their jobs.

So by the time he gets back, the Guard is a lot less dangerous than it used to be (especially with Palps gone and not bathing in their misery anymore), and as the 'new' commander he's mostly on datawork, so he doesn't get injured all that much.

That said, he did absolutely send a fake medical report along with his fake spec ops credentials/background, so as far as Defib knows, Vertex is entirely healthy.

And with the rest of the Guard still recovering/adjusting to their new normal(on top of the majority of them being chronic medbay dodgers), he's so happy to have at least one person he doesn't have to worry about!

[kenobster]

Mostly to save myself some space on a post later, I'm gonna be anecdotal for a second and talk about my complicated feelings about Fox whump.

For context, I've actually enjoyed Fox whump on occasion. Recently, I even wrote a tiny bit of it. While I have not delved much into Fox fan creations (other than the fic This, too, was a gift, and my enjoyment this incredible fanart), I have, for a long time, been observing Fox fans & Fox spaces and noticing certain trends in the Fox & Corrie Guard fandom. Although Fox has about two minutes of screentime for the entirety of TCW (and never removes his helmet IIRC), fandom has expanded upon his character with an enormous amount of headcanon. To keep us all on the same page, I'd like to establish a baseline of my understanding of his character. For starters, people seem to characterize Fox as a good person but also (endearingly) a total trainwreck. He's someone who has made mistakes and done some not-so-great things, who huffs and haws and gripes and groans, but who eventually decides to do the right thing. Generally, Fox fans seem to agree that Palpatine is manipulative and abusive of him and the Corrie Guard, but they do tend to fall shy of acknowledging that Anakin was one of Palpatine's primary victims. In fact, despite the amount of attention Fox fans seem to devote to Obi-Wan (and Codywan as a ship), their headcanons leave Anakin mysteriously absent. At worst, the Fox fandom seems notoriously biased against Anakin and has characterized him in ways much worse than pre-O66 material actually shows him to be.

Normally, this kind of headcanoning wouldn't be an issue to me. As a writer of trashy noncon, I support the stance that every fan should be allowed to create, headcanon, and play as they wish in their fictional sandbox. In the case of Fox fanon, however, I have misgivings. These headcanons, characterizations, and portrayals of whump tend to usurp everything about Anakin's storyline and fill it with Fox instead. For a classic example, see this post's idea to put Fox in a situation practically identical to popular Darth Vader/Anakin fanlore. For another example, see this poll where Fox outscores everyone by a landslide on the matter of who deserves to kill Palpatine the most, a poll upon which Anakin doesn't even make the list. Additionally, see this popular post listing the top three characters who deserve to kill Palpatine, upon which Fox ranks No. 2 and Anakin isn't featured at all. That's Fox, a character with two minutes of screentime (much of which was spent killing Fives), versus Anakin, the protagonist of the PT and the character who actually killed Palpatine. Though only tangentially related, I've also seen fanart that paired a member of the Corrie Guard with Padme, Anakin's own wife! From where I'm standing, Fox and/or the Corrie Guard seems very much like a convenient substitute for the gaps made by tearing Anakin out of his own narrative.

In this sense, the existence of Fox fanon & whump is completely baffling to me. The PT and the OT (the most canonical of canon!) have already provided the exact character that Fox fans seem to crave. Anakin was the victim who was groomed, manipulated, and abused by Palpatine before and after Order 66. Anakin is the good person who made a terrible mistake, the one who huffs and haws and gripes and groans but does the right thing in the end. Anakin is a gift to those exact interests, and what did the Fox fandom do? They denied this gift so fiercely that they had to invent their own fanonical blorbo to take Anakin's place.

Time and time again, I've wondered what could possibly explain this. So far, my developing hypothesis does not bode well. Outside of fandom, society as a whole is currently cycling through another unmerciful and intolerant phase (i.e. cancel culture, purity culture, censorship, etc). It's true that people must face the consequences of their actions and that justice is incredibly important—but there's a fine line between justice and revenge, and an even finer line between preventative and punitive justice. Even the scummiest scum of the earth deserve to be treated humanely. For those who live in the United States, there's a reason the Bill of Rights contains the Eighth Amendment—the government's duty to protect its citizen from cruel and unusual punishment. The idea that it's morally acceptable to treat "evil people" (i.e. murderers, rapists, etc.) like dogshit while they are locked up and/or prevented from doing further harm is one core flavor of the the newest brand of purity culture, but this time it's being weaponized by extremists on the radical left.

Coupled with societal distate toward any villain perceived to be appealing to a young female audience (you know which villains I mean), this new brand of purity culture has invaded fandom spaces as well. In countless narratives, authors are denied or criticized for giving fictional villains redemption arcs. In countless posts, fans are denied or criticized for feeling sympathy toward the ways in which villains can be victims. In Star Wars specifically, a large portion of fandom refuses to acknowledge Anakin's suffering. They label him as evil from birth and/or puberty, and they feel little-to-no compassion for the ways in which he was abused and traumatized (see this post for further description of this subject). Some of fandom even demonizes people like me for not sharing their viewpoints.

It makes sense that people who have been swayed by this new wave of puritanical propaganda will attempt to nullify any morbid fascination they feel toward Palpatine's abuse of Anakin/Vader. Showing sympathy toward a child-killer could easily result in an uncomfortable level of cognitive dissonance, after all. Thus, my hypothesis is that fandom created a new blorbo to cope with their guilt-ridden interest in Anakin. They created a palatable blorbo. A blorbo who shares the same general vibes but has committed less atrocities and is, therefore, still "redeemable." A blorbo who, by virtue of being a fanon creation, is inaccessible to the misogynist disgust society holds toward well-known villains. In other words, I believe that Fox fanon sprung from people's inability to face their sympathy for Anakin—or rather their inability to face the fact that there is no simple answer to the overlap between villainy and victimhood. And now, because of that, we have Fox whump. We have Fox fans who are convinced that a character who shares many similar attributes was evil from birth and/or puberty.

Whether my hypothesis is true or false, I am well aware that there is nothing I can do about the existence of Fox fanon now. I have little interest in ridding the world of Fox fanon anyway... In actuality, I hope with all of my soul that my hypothesis is false. Why? Because if my hypothesis is true, then that's a problem. And it hasn't gone away. And it isn't going away. Regardless of whether we individually like Fox or not, I think it's incredibly important that we collectively reflect on this.