Doohickeys and Thingamajigs @krakenantlers - Tumblr Blog

AKA odd_stick

While I've been poking around fandom since before ff.net, I was most active on LJ, where I went by odd_stick. Then Real Life took my focus for several years before I finally hopped over to tumblr.

I'm most active here, but you can also find me at:

AO3 Twitter Pillowfort

https://bsky.app/profile/krakenantlers.bsky.social

https://linktr.ee/KrakenAntlers

I also have a Recommendations side blog: @krakenantlersreadgood

gaylor-moon

grippy3000

fun fact one of the world champions in pepper-eating contests is a trans woman and she actually faced significant backlash because people somehow thought she had a biological advantage. to eating spicy pepper

grippy3000

update bc i went back and checked: her name is brianna “the chilli queen” skinner and she set a record in 2017 by slamming back 23 carolina reapers consecutively. she only stopped when told to by the referees, and the next year she stepped down out of boredom. queen

pettyartist

Here's a picture of her, by the way

And her super supportive wife

nentuaby

The championship, it should be noted, is unisex. Apparently being a trans woman gives you an innate biological advantage over both cis men and cis women.

vexwerewolf

The innate biological advantage of being cool as fuck

deadpowol

kira-7

This is a spot from an italian estate agency (we are governed by the right-wing party)

The woman says "Ridiculous..."

If you want to spread it elsewhere, here's the official link

arctic-hands

[Video Description: An ad with piano music over it all, showing an elderly woman in her home, knitting, when two younger men walk by her window, which catches her attention. She stares out her window at them as they kiss each other while walking, the old lady staring in disbelief. Cut to the old woman approaching a residence with a broom in hand, staring up at the second floor window where a small rainbow Pride flag is hanging. The old woman stares up at it and mutters "Ridiculo", before getting up on a ladder with her broom to remove the flag. Focus on the flag fluttering to the ground as church bells chime. The scene then cuts to the couple from before, approaching their home with grocery bags in hand before one stops and stares at the second floor, stopping his partner who then drops the groceries as he too stares up. It's then revealed that the small pride flag had been replaced with a gigantic, hand-knit pride flag. It then cuts back to the old woman's home, where a tin of rainbow-colored yarn sits on her table. The hands of the old woman are holding and fondly touching an old black and white photo of two young smiling women, leaning against each other. Cut to the old woman's face as she stares out with a look of happy pride on her face. At the end of the video, the name "Idealista" appears on screen, followed by "buon pride" along with a rainbow. End VD.]

spaceofentropy

One correction:

The old lady is not in her home. She is at work. She's meant to be what in Italian is called "la portinaia", aka a cross between a doorwoman and cleaner of a residential building. She's in her small "office" space, at the entrance of the building, from where she can survey the coming and goings of the inhabitants. It's a job that has mostly disappeared, but is culturally very clear to us as having the connotation of "potentially gossipy, one-million-percent judgmental woman who sees everything that goes on in the apartment complex, knows everyone and their secrets, and has Strong Opinions™️".

In this case, thankfully, the Strong Opinion™️ is that those two men are ridiculous with their teeny tiny flag for ants.

#video

moonberrycake

#ffvii #vincent valentine #fanart

wolfythewitch

Chords by the amazing devil

#phm #project hail mary #video #fanvid

fishfingersandscarves

a poster i made for my classroom and this upcoming school year! do you know how to give an art critique?

white-aster

On AI agents, grunt work, and the part of science that isn't replaceable.

...why wouldn't a first-year student outsource their thinking to an agent, if doing so means three papers instead of one? The logic is airtight, right up until the moment it isn't. Because the same career ladder that rewards early publication volume eventually demands something that no agent can provide: the ability to identify a good problem, to know when a result smells wrong, to supervise someone else's work with the confidence that comes only from having done it yourself. You can't skip the first five years of learning and expect to survive the next twenty.

AIs are both bad at producing a good product AND at producing learning in the people using them. Those who outsource their "learning" to AI have successfully sabotaged their own learning experience. Rather than doing the "grunt work" themselves and slowly learning, they instead supervise a machine that has a high probability of making mistakes...that they will not have the knowledge to catch.

I've long thought that the best use of AI is to be a tool once you already know what you're doing. Which means that AI is utterly horrible for people to use when they are LEARNING. Students using AI to produce assignments instead of doing them themselves...we might as well just let those students have the day off. Either way, they're not learning.

bigdafty

Sound very much on.

#video #dogs

izzieedraws

shore leave

#obi wan kenobi #star wars #fanart

the-messy-artist

Has this been done yet

kailynvrse

something something storm approaching

#devil may cry #vergil sparda #fanart

superbrieflightstudentlove

Anakin Skywalker Would Have Been a Terrible Father — Even If He Never Became Darth Vader

One of the most persistent fandom headcanons is the “soft dad Anakin” AU. The version where the war ends, he stays on the Light Side, Order 66 never happens, and he becomes this fiercely loving, devoted, protective father to Luke and Leia. The version where he heals, goes to therapy (in spirit if not literally), and pours all that intensity into healthy family life.

It’s a comforting fantasy.

It also fundamentally misunderstands who Anakin Skywalker is in the prequel era.

Let’s start with the text itself.

"Anakin disregarded the moral point of the tale, and instead fixated on a glimmer of hope he found in it. He knew it was dangerous, but he was willing to give anything to discover this mythological power so that Padmé might cheat death. He would willingly lay down his own life, lose their child, and destroy everything else he held dear to save Padmé from his mother's fate - and save himself from enduring a life without her. In exchange for Padmé's life, he was prepared to watch the whole galaxy burn."

In the RoTS novelization, Anakin reflects that he would “willingly lay down his own life, lose their child, and destroy everything else he held dear to save Padmé from his mother's fate.” He is prepared, explicitly, to sacrifice his unborn child if it means Padmé lives.

That’s not subtext. That’s not interpretation. That’s canon interior monologue.

And that alone tells you everything you need to know about what kind of father he would have been.

1. He Does Not Prioritize His Child. He Prioritizes His Attachment.

A good parent prioritizes the safety and welfare of their child above all else. That doesn’t mean they love their spouse less. It means that once you become a parent, your responsibility shifts.

Anakin’s does not.

He is willing to let his child die if that is the price of keeping Padmé alive. Not because he carefully weighted two impossible choices. Not because he was forced into a moral dilemma. But because, in his mind, the child is secondary.

The core of Anakin’s fear is not “my child will grow up without a mother.” It’s “I cannot survive losing Padmé.”

His driving motivation is not fatherhood. It’s abandonment trauma.

He is still the nine-year-old slave who lost Shmi. He is still the traumatized child who never learned emotional regulation. And instead of processing that, he transfers the entire weight of his psychological stability onto Padmé.

That is not the foundation of healthy parenting. That is emotional dependency.

If your child grows up knowing, consciously or unconsciously, that their father would have traded their life for their mother’s? That does something to a person. It breeds insecurity. It breeds resentment. It creates a hierarchy of love.

Anakin doesn’t see it that way. But children feel these things.

2. His Love Is Possessive, Not Selfless.

Anakin doesn’t love gently. He loves intensely, obsessively, desperately.

He doesn’t want “a family” in the abstract. He wants a nurturer. He wants stability. He wants someone to fill the hole left by Shmi. He wants something he can call his — something that cannot leave him.

That is why his love is so volatile.

In Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, he confesses admiration for dictatorship. Padmé laughs it off. When he massacres the Tusken Raiders — “not just the men, but the women and the children too” — she rationalizes it as trauma.

This is a man who responds to grief with annihilation.

And she marries him days later.

In Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, when Obi-Wan confronts Padmé with the truth about the Jedi Temple massacre (thousands dead — adults, teenagers, children, infants), her response is denial. She already knows he has killed children before. She chooses not to integrate that reality.

When she says, “There’s still good in him,” it does not land as clear-eyed hope. It lands as a continuation of years of deliberate blindness.

This is not a relationship built on truth. It’s built on projection and fantasy.

They love versions of each other that don’t fully exist.

Now imagine raising children inside that.

3. Anakin Is Jealous by Nature.

This is the part fandom doesn’t like to talk about.

Anakin gets jealous of Obi-Wan. He gets jealous of Padmé’s political commitments. He gets jealous of the Jedi Council. He resents anything that divides loyalty.

He wants exclusive emotional primacy.

Now introduce a child.

A baby demands attention. A toddler monopolizes affection. A child often becomes the center of a mother’s emotional world.

Do we honestly believe that pre-fall Anakin — who already struggles with insecurity and possessiveness — would respond to that without difficulty?

He might adore his child. He might be tender in moments. But if he ever perceived that Padmé loved the child more? Or that her focus shifted permanently?

That would hit directly at his abandonment wound.

And Anakin does not handle abandonment well.

The same man who slaughtered an entire Tusken village because he lost his mother is not someone whose jealousy would remain mild or well-regulated.

4. Trauma Bond, Not Stable Partnership

Their relationship is forged in adrenaline and secrecy.

The Clone Wars heighten everything. Forbidden love. Battlefield reunions. Intensity. Passion. Grand gestures.

But remove the war.

Remove the urgency.

Remove the “we could die tomorrow.”

What remains?

Two people who never truly learned to know each other outside crisis.

Padmé defines herself by service to the Republic. Anakin defines himself by the need to protect and possess the one person who makes him feel safe.

That is not sustainable long-term.

Even in a universe where Anakin never falls to the Dark Side, something would eventually rupture. His neediness would clash with her duty. Her compartmentalization would clash with his demand for emotional centrality.

Children raised in unstable emotional ecosystems feel that tension.

5. “Soft Dad Anakin” Ignores the Psychological Core of His Character

Fandom loves redemption through domesticity.

But parenthood does not automatically heal trauma.

It often amplifies it.

Anakin is:

Unprocessed in his grief

Terrified of loss

Prone to black-and-white thinking

Comfortable with violence when emotionally triggered

Deeply possessive

Emotionally dependent on one person

Those traits don’t disappear because you put a baby in his arms.

Without profound inner work — the kind he was never shown doing — those traits would bleed into fatherhood.

Maybe not as physical violence. But as:

Emotional volatility

Overprotection that borders on suffocation

Favoritism

Jealousy

Conditional warmth tied to loyalty

And children are exquisitely sensitive to that.

6. Padmé’s Enabling Matters

This is not solely an Anakin problem.

Padmé repeatedly chooses denial.

She ignores his authoritarian statements. She rationalizes his massacre of non-combatants. She lies to Obi-Wan after the Temple slaughter. She attempts to run away with him rather than confront what he has done.

She does not meaningfully challenge his darkest impulses until it is too late.

In a “happy AU,” unless Padmé fundamentally changes as well, that enabling pattern continues.

And children raised in households where one parent enables the other’s instability learn dangerous lessons about love.

7. The Hard Truth

Anakin Skywalker could have been loving.

He could have been affectionate.

He could have been playful.

He could have been fiercely protective.

But loving does not equal healthy.

Devotion does not equal stability.

Intensity does not equal safety.

The tragedy of Anakin is not that he lacked love. It’s that his love was warped by fear and possessiveness.

Without confronting that core wound — without dismantling his obsession with control and fear of abandonment — he would not magically transform into a perfectly regulated father just because the war ended.

The Dark Side did not invent those flaws.

It magnified them.

And if we take the text seriously — including his own admission that he would sacrifice his child to save Padmé — then the uncomfortable conclusion is this:

Anakin Skywalker was not built, at that stage of his life, to be a good father.

Not because he was incapable of love.

But because he loved in a way that consumes.

And children should never have to compete with that.

#star wars #anakin skywalker #padme amidala #meta