#the inherent fear of wanting to let loose and unmask but fearing that such a drastic personality change will turn people away

[raymoohackery]

can we get a shoutout for all the medium support needs bitches that's managed to mask themselves into making their surroundings believe theyre low support needs. and now that the burnout is finally crumbling and they feel deeply alienated from all their social contacts. displaying autistic traits and voicing needs now makes everyone think you're being annoying and faking it for attention. because boy howdy. hoo

i'm bitches

[whumpbby]

I finished typing and now I feel I have to preface it with a: this is all a monologue about Jedi and Force and Lucas’ inability to show the good story he wants to tell - just a warning. This is in no way meant to contradict the other post with that quote floating around or argue against it - just my own rambling coming to a conclusion I keep struggling with when it comes to SW universe and the ways it makes no sense to me and how I feel deep in my bones that Lucas is a crap storyteller.

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I don’t know why, but for all the interesting concepts Lucas talks about, Anakin’s fall never sat well with me. In time I came to the conclusion I would respond better if the Jedi culture surrounding it wasn’t so contradictory to itself.

And if he wasn’t so heavily leaning on the concept of the ‘pure love’ that is unconditional and undemanding and ‘unselfish’. Tldr: that love does not exist outside of poetry and romance dramas and imagination. Like every other emotion humans feel, love is conditional.

Take the first trilogy - I got that. The Jedi were largely missing and there was not much lore-wise, but the vibe it gave was measured and peaceful and mindful, and all the things that stood against the Empire - that represented the Dark Side in a very concise way. It wasn’t too nuanced, so we could buy it in this very simple ‘princes kidnapped b ya dragon’ story. This is as good as Lucas gets.

But then the prequels happened and Jedi became this weird, extremely specific, but conflicting idea. They are not supposed to take sides in politics - except when they do. They are not supposed to kill - except when they do, with freaking relish. They are not supposed to love or hate or allow emotions dictate their ways - oh, except when they do. And they can have sex - just not sex with someone they want to settle down with (oh boy, is that a signifier of a story written by a guy or what?). All seems to be ‘except when they do, as long as it can be adequately justified to make them look good’.

And I do have an issue with the idea of ‘Anakin was too old to join, he was already attached to his mother’ which is, when you think about it, is insane. Learning to control your emotions and letting go of your wants, Buddhist way, fine.

Aiming to train children to not be attached to their parents? What? How young a child has to be for that attachment forms? How is a meditation and repeating mantras going to help a 5-year old who is missing their mom at the temple? How do you even expect to train a child out of missing their mom??? How is it NOT better to get an older child that can reason above the instinctual and hardwired need for their mother? 

But let’s say Anakin’s attachment to his mother was ‘selfish’ from the beginning - but, that’s the thing, was it? Was it really? They were slaves and she was his only family, okay, obviously that made his attachment stronger and more layered than, say, a normal middle-class Coruscanti kid who could love their mom without constant fear that any day they can be separated forever by someone who didn’t give a shit. In that sense, yes, Anakin was desperately attached to his mom and afraid of loosing her - there was fear in him. Right, I’m there with you, Yoda.

But the movies show us that the way Jedi seem to approach these hard subjects is by not approaching them at all - oh, well, we can’t take him in. He had a difficult childhood and there are issues attached, get him out of here.

In a galaxy full of races and issues and the Force being tied to any and all creatures in any and all circumstances - this was the hard line Jedi were drawing. In essence, either only accepting kids young enough to not remember their parents (and I see absolutely no issues whatsoever that could happen here, nope) or with childhoods perfect enough not to have any issues whatsoever. Anyone else? Adults that discovered Force when they were older? Kids like Anakin with hard childhoods? Creatures that were either culturally or chemically wired differently enough that the tight reins Jedi held over their emotions weren’t possible for them? Nope. Go away. You are a bad person in the making.

If you spend a moment contemplating, you will realise this is such a white privileged guy way to think about it. And if you stick your head into the microwave for a couple seconds, you can almost understand how Lucas thought this is something profound and mystical.

No that I think about it... I always thought Sith were freaking clowns - their philosophy makes no sense, their ‘rule of two’ is hilarious, everything about them is just so badly designed and thought out, and who would ever decide to join of that creepy cult of their own volition? It made no sense!

But, as an answer to the egalitarian and contradictory ways of the Jedi - Sith make all the sense to exist. And let’s forget about the Light and Dark (that I don’t believe exist above the ways of personal emotional expression that in time trains the Force around a person in certain ways - like a person can train their brain in and out of anxiety ofr example), but focusing strictly on philosophy - yeah, being a Sith makes sense when any other way is barred form someone by no fault of their own. And barred with an excuse they are a bad seed anyway. 

“You fear/hate/desire hence you can’t access the Force with us” = “Well fuck you, then, I will access the Force in my own way, using these exact emotions!”

Like, Sith are clowns, but Jedi suck in their own very special way and their fall was just waiting to happen.

I get a strange feeling that Lucas created Jedi as a class of a warrior monk in DnD and then scrambled to create their enemies out of the simplest contradictions. Light-dark. Love-Hate. Peace-Fear. Etc. But because Jedi were so simple - once they started to gain popularity and he had to expand their lore and layer on the philosophy, he hit a wall. Or rather, the bottom of the kiddy pool. Because a ‘warrior monk’ is not an a ‘good’ class, but he wanted them to be mostly warriors, but also a force of good in the galaxy, because Star Wars is the same simple story repeated again and again with a new set of characters (regardless of how much fake politics is thrown in to obscure that fact) so this whole universe is basically built on giving Jedi reasons to fight and kill, and adequately justifying them. And then the Dark Side had to catch up by being more ridiculously evil at every turn - accidentally unmasking the way Jedi philosophy falls apart under closer scrutiny.

So like, to make a full circle, the one thing the prequels did well was to show Anakin’s fall (and I am not gonna argue, it was effective and he is a villain of this story) but they also presented - I think against the creator’s intention - why it was pretty much inevitable. Not because Palpatine was there to whisper poison, or because Force itself strived for ‘balance’ (even though the latter is a hilarious idea I love to contemplate) - but because Jedi, as presented in the movies-media around them, as a philosophy and way of life is inherently contradictory and unsustainable from the point of being a, well, a breathing, thinking being.  The ‘selfish love’ argument would work so much better if it wasn’t presented with an example of a kid who was born a slave and the people who saw it as a strike against his character, and did very little to address the specific issues that could arise from that before it was too late. 

Would it fucking kill them to let go of their strict training routine and ensure that his specific emotional needs were met? That Shimi was, I don’t know, NOT A SLAVE. They seem to interfere into politics just fine when need arises - but not when it’s a sandy planet in the ass-end of the universe no one cares about. Then no, we can’t liberate one slave. That would be acting in self-interest - not in the interest of not allowing one of the strongest members of out order to fall into the ruin we have forseen form the beginning. 

It would work better is if Anakin’s ‘selfishness’ was presented as his inability to let Padme leave him for someone else/just leave him - not to be unwilling to let her die.  

Think about it for a moment - he wasn’t presented with the idea of Padme leaving him. With the idea of his mother not loving him anymore. He was firmly and, form his point of view, believably, presented with the idea of both of them DYING. Which actually happened to his mom, solidifying the fear in his mind.

Yes, he was not meant to go on a rampage and kill the ones who killed Shimi - but wasn’t he? The Jedi are not against killing. Only killing in self-interest I guess - when self-interest is not one’s life and their political affiliation or their ‘job’ at hand, that is. Revenge is a no-no, but a military retaliation is a yes-go. Can’t kill anyone who wronged me - but I can kill those who wronged a person who gives me orders. How does that work within a Jedi doctrine? 

How, in good conscience, can you present this scenario, George, and then try to spin it into this big philosophical bullcrap about unselfish love????  Jedi murdered people over political squabbles - but I guess that’s okay because they weren’t invested??? And that’s better?!?!? George! What the fuck! You are such a bloke my head hurts!

In case of Anakin, Jedi were essentially Elsa’s parents. I pretty much despise Elsa and the film she crawled out of, and I personally don’t like Anakin as a character either, so this is not stanning in any way, but their issues scream ‘I was raised by well-meaning idiots’ and shows the level of botched storytelling I just can’t reconcile.

Which, you know what? 

Luke, who spent years studying Jedi ways and taking them into himself? 

I can believe than this Luke would try to kill his nephew at the barest whiff of the Dark Premonition instead of helping him manage his motions in a somewhat healthy way - that seems to be exactly what a real Jedi would do, after all.