Jedi defense squad

Aroace, she/her

[queer-as-city-folk]

Anti-city people are just plain fascinating to me

[peppermintquartz]

I used to live 5 min walk from a small neighborhood shopping place that had a supermarket, a 7-Eleven, three clinics, a dentist, a bakery, a stationery shop, an optometrist, a hairdresser/nail tech salon, a barber's (they're next to each other), three food courts/eating houses, a KFC, three ATMs, a pet shop and a childcare centre. (I'm sure I'm missing something but never mind.)

Within a 10-15min walk, I could get to 2 different larger malls that had facilities such as a library and connects directly to the subway station, a light rail station and a bus interchange.

I could literally wake up at 2a.m. and walk to the 7-Eleven to get a slushie and a sandwich if I wanted. That was how convenient it was. I didn't need to spend hours commuting to and from the doctor's if I didn't feel well enough for work.

Grocery shopping is a part of many people's daily routine. We go to the market or supermarket on the same day we plan to cook.

And this is common here. We're a small city state, true, so the closeness of everything is kinda forced on us, but even so, neighborhoods are planned in such a way that everyone can easily access a variety of goods and services without too much hassle. And we do use little carts! They're useful and practical things!

I do want a bit of earth to grow plants in, but I grew up a d live in a city and I love how convenient everything is. Walkable neighborhoods are blessings for everyone.

[aetherograph]

literally everyone has one of these by the door. you take this with you.

the grocery store is usually on your same block or just a 1-2 minute walk away.

And grocery stores in cities DELIVER. Even grocery stores that don't normally deliver, like Trader Joe's, will delivery to a certain radius around them. There's grocery delivery services in cities, where you can only order a delivery bc they have no store they just operate as delivery. They are cheap too.

grocery stores in cities also pack all your groceries into two of those big paper bags if you tell them you're using the train. Some places like Trader Joe's just automatically pack everything in two bags bc they assume you are using the train to get home and need to be able to carry it.

the only disadvantage to cities is going to IKEA doesn't work so well there. Costco is a little difficult too. But regular groceries? Yeah we have systems for that.

And you are abusing your kids if you don't let them outside without supervision by the time they are 12 or accompanied by a teen sibling or friend. I am not taking debate on that unless you're arguing it should be younger (I picked 12 bc that was the legal age you could leave a child alone for a little while where I grew up). The world is not unsafe for children. You need to send your kids on little errands or let them play outside together, because children are people and need to be learning independent function without you hovering over them telling them to be afraid of everyone.

[heymerle]

I was walking to and from school by myself when I was 9. We got taught traffic safety at school, because most parents didn't want to drive a kid to school if it wasn't raining, and a mile was the closest you could live in grade school and still get a bus ride. (two miles for HS.)

The only kids my age who died, that I remember, were hit by a car, outside of town, while riding bikes at the side of the road.

[reynard61]

I was walking to school *ALONE* at age six. I lived in Shaker Heights, OH, and went to Ludlow Elementary School. (Now called The Ludlow Early Learning Center.) Here are the two routes that I took:

The black route was the one that I started taking in first grade. It was nice, but I tended to be late after lunch because there was a guy who walked his dog at the same time and I was more interested in playing with the dog than I was in going to school. The red route was the one that I had to switch to as an alternative. It was slightly longer, but had fewer distractions. At no time on either route did i ever feel unsafe. (1960s Shaker Heights was pretty Upper Middle-class at the time.)

Yes, I actually *do* "push around a little cart or something". (I used to pull it behind a recumbent tricycle, but that got stolen last year. 🤬 ) I live near several stores and use it when I have to get gallon jugs of milk. (I'm 65 and neither of my shoulders is in any shape to be hauling those home any more. 😒 ) Also, eight bags of groceries is a rather unrealistic load since I live alone and that much would go bad before I could eat it all.

"Based in Christ"

Not an attribute that I'd want to brag about, frankly... 🙄😒

[s-richmond]

No one every believes me when I tell them that I don't have a car, I walk to work and I almost never leave my SE Portland neighborhood unless I'm visiting a Friend. Work is a 40 minute walk, which is a bit. But everything else is a 5-15 minute walk. 3 different grocery stores, the clinic and pharmacy, my dentist, about 60 restaurants and food carts, movie theatre, farmers market (3 different ones), coffee shop (so many), the post office, the art supply store, the liquor store, my bank. The only place I regularly go that isn't in my neighborhood is the comic shop and the book store, and both are just a very short bus ride beyond work. If I need to go anywhere else in teh city, I can usually get there in less than an hour on our bus and train system. Sometimes in just 20-30 minutes. I usually grocery shop twice a week on the way to or from work. That's also when I do most of my errands. I drop off packages for work at the post office once a week. The clinic is next to the grocery store, which is on the way to work. If its raining, I put my hood up or wear a hat. If its REALLY raining and I don't want to deal with it, I take the bus. Its never really an issue. Its always pretty easy. Sometimes my walk to work is longer than someone's drive to work. That's fine. It's about an hour and a half round trip. It doesn't cost me anything, I get exercise, I get to spend the time thinking, I don't have to deal with a car and I get to know my neighborhood.

[sunderwight]

ship dynamic:

Character A approached Character B in an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" situation but it turns out that no one has ever approached Character B for an alliance before and they are now super smitten with Character A and even more invested in being "allies" than in defeating their shared enemy.

Character A: we will make our enemy regret being born! 🥂

Character B: omg we??? 👀

[sarahreesbrennan]

the dynamic the Emperor wishes he had.

Rae: and we shall be a band of villains in order to achieve our aims.

Key: yay 🥰🥰🥰

Rae: woo!

(incidents)

Rae: sorry not you, the Once and Forever Emperor, Commander of the Living and the Dead, sorry for the misunderstanding

Key: But my band of villains? My evil queen? My spymaster?

Rae: put down the band of villains before somebody gets hurt (tries to wrench them from imperial claws)

Key: look I’ve found an evil adviser to add to our evil collection 🥰

The Vipers & the Prime Minister: Sire. Please.

Key: #mybandofvillains #OURevilways

[adancerofsymphonia]

In the time I have spent consuming media that involves popular bad™ male characters and/or M/F ships where the male character is morally gray or outright evil or conflicted or basically anyone who isn't completely safe and defanged, I have often comes across this statement and its countless other variations.

"Stuff like this is made to brainwash young girls into thinking that they can 'fix' dangerous men. Such girls usually end up in abusive relationships and their parents are right to worry."

It is rather strange to come across such a gross generalization, operating on an assumption that girls are blank slates whom anyone can manipulate and who can't distinguish between real and make believe on top of it.

In my entire "career"(if you can call it that) of engaging with fiction , the girls and women that I have run into in fandoms happened to be some of the most intelligent, talented, cool, witty and insightful people I have ever met. I've devoured the fics they have written. I have delighted in the arts and edits they've made. Their perspectives and interpretations about the characters and their relationships are genuinely fascinating to read about regardless of whether I agree with it or not. They are the ones who are most often at the receiving end of the antis' ire for no valid reason but they just keep deriving joy and inspiration from their favourite characters and ships and keep sharing it with others through stories, art and thoughts. They are not just smart but incredibly resilient, sensitive and aware not just about the media they consume but about the world around them and its issues.

I look up to their brilliance. I marvel at their passion. I admire them. I adore them.

[sarahreesbrennan]

my thesis

[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.

[gffa]

You know, I hate how a lot of people see the fall of the Jedi Order as something akin to the ideological collapse of a political party and/or religious denomination, not a genocide directly instigated by Palpatine.

Many people seem to believe that if the Jedi had allowed attachment, they never would have fallen. In my humble opinion ( and please forgive me if I'm being insensitive ) this is about as stupid as saying that the Holocaust never would have happened if Jews ate pork.

Even if the Jedi are a religion, they're also a religious culture, suddenly killing people based on their religion, even the babies, doesn't make it any better. I think a lot of people want to see the Jedi as a job you clock into at the beginning of the day and then go home from at night, rather than that it is its own culture and religion. Padme doesn't stop being from Naboo when the clock hits 6pm. Bail doesn't stop being Alderaanian when he goes home at night. The culture that raised you is your culture and the Jedi are exactly the same. It's a religion, a people, a lifestyle, a culture, a family. And, as tired as I am of having the attachment discussion--because I'm tired of people being unwilling to admit that a word can have more than one meaning and that, no, Buddhism shouldn't have to change just because the West also has a concept using the same word, we can learn to understand the concept of context--what would that have changed? Would Sidious suddenly have gone, oh, well, if the Jedi can get married, then let's not genocide them out of existence, because they seem cool? Let's say, even if Anakin was 100% on the side of the Jedi and never turned to Darth Vader and helped fight Sidious with them, it's not like Sidious' plans wouldn't have changed. Anakin would never have known that he was Sidious, because Sidious wouldn't have revealed himself, trying to turn Anakin, so the confrontation with Mace would never have played out that way, and the clones would still have chips in their heads and the whole thing was still coming to a head. Nothing, nothing the Jedi changed or did, so long as they would have been a threat to Sidious' control over the Force, to be the only one who could have it, would have changed his plans to genocide them out of existence. (I'm usually less cranky than this, but Twitter really made me lose my patience yesterday. I've had an ass full of some of the people in this fandom.)

[independence1776]

I have a lot to say about this, being both Jewish and a Jedi fan, but I’m not in the mood at the moment. The short version: yes, what happened to the Jedi was flat-out a genocide; Palpatine wanted them dead because they were Jedi. Yes, the Jedi are a people, culture, and religion. How some people in this fandom treat Order 66 and the Purge is absolutely trying to excuse genocide. And there is more than a little antisemitism in how some anti-Jedi fans behave and word their arguments.

[antianakin]

It's incredible how much Anakin fans truly do not want to grapple with the fact that Anakin is a VILLAIN. He is The Villain of the story. It's not actually Palpatine really. It's Anakin. Anakin is the main character, sure, but it's his choices that determine everyone else's fates and he chooses to be a villain. He chooses to make everyone else suffer when they don't have to. He chooses to make everyone else miserable with him because he's too much of a coward to do anything else. Palpatine didn't even EXIST in the first ever Star Wars film and barely exists in the other two in the original trilogy. The villain you spend a lot more time with is ANAKIN and then they wrote an entire trilogy about how he BECOMES the villain of the story.

But his fans never ever ever want to admit that he's the villain of the story. They just don't. And it makes having discussions with them about this story and this character near impossible because they interpret the story as being "about" someone else like Palpatine or the Jedi just so that Anakin can be that much less at fault for everything and that much less of a villain.

It's so tiring. Anakin is such a complicated complex fascinating character, but ONLY if you're willing to engage with him on the level he actually exists at which requires being willing to acknowledge that he is The Villain Of The Story.

[holybagelsstuff]

Watch another Anakin apologist go "b-but he was groomed and also mentally ill 🥺🥺🥺"

Sidious is my absolute favorite and I think he's #1 evil in SW after all, but even this doesn't erase the fact that he exists with the purpose of contributing to Anakin's rise as a villain. Sidious is darkness only; Anakin had light within him but buried it all under his own fears and insecurities. That's what makes him more dimensional than his Master and that's why he's so amazing as a character. But otherwise, fuck him.

[antianakin]

I love Palpatine, too, but I tend to love him specifically because of how little nuance he has and how deeply he seems to love being evil. It's very fun and amusing for me to watch, personally. He's not a particularly DEEP character, but he's an enjoyable villain.

With Anakin, the reasons I dislike him are also the same reasons I argue for why he IS such a complex character. I don't deny that Anakin is super complicated and nuanced, it's not that I don't understand the appeal of him, I just... don't like him. He doesn't do it for me. And so I tend to focus my attention on the villain aspect of him rather than the victim aspect of him as the part that's more interesting to me to discuss.

And I think that the same things that make Anakin sympathetic are also what make him arguably an even WORSE villain than Palpatine.

Palpatine is often treated like a force of nature. Like yeah, he's manipulative and greedy and selfish and evil, but also... what else is he gonna do? This is just WHO HE IS, we're never shown a single indication that Palpatine could be or ever has been better. He's essentially just there to be darkness and temptation given physical form and nothing else. He makes me think of The Son from the Mortis episodes and how The Daughter says that she doesn't hate him because he does selfish things, it's literally just who he is and he can't be anything else. She has to stop him, sure, but she doesn't blame him for doing what he does nor would she truly try to change him. Palpatine I think is often framed similarly by the narrative, even though the worldbuilding would imply otherwise. Do we blame the volcano for the lives it destroys when it erupts? Do we hate the earth when it quakes? Of course not.

Whereas Anakin is REPEATEDLY shown to have the capacity to do and be better and then repeatedly chooses to do evil shit. He KNOWS what he's doing is awful and doesn't even necessarily LIKE doing it because on some level he does recognize that the shit he's doing has consequences on him too, but he's too goddamn weak and lazy to do anything else until his flesh and blood is in trouble. And the fact that we are told over and over and over again that Anakin CAN AND SHOULD do better and knows HOW to do better and just doesn't WANT to do better makes him feel even more evil to me than Palpatine. Palpatine is treated like someone for whom evil is his nature, he can't be or do anything else, which arguably means he is no more evil than a hurricane or a wildfire. But Anakin is as human as it gets. His very relatability tells us that the evil choices he makes are things he CAN help, but he'd rather cause everyone else pain than feel even slightly uncomfortable.

Palpatine is a natural disaster who can't seem to be anything other than what he is, but Anakin is a monster who could choose to be literally anything else and PREFERS being a monster.

And I find one of those a lot more evil and reprehensible than the other, personally.

[mothnem]

Palpatine is a Wildfire. Anakin is an Arsonist.

[optmstcontmblr]

It's kinda funny how people will attack the Air Nomads almost the exact same way that people do the Jedi order. But when thinking about it more it's not so funny cause both groups are so similar (probably cause they're based on the same concepts and principles) and how people get weirdly angry at emotional regulation and peaceful view points.

[silvaurum]

"i would kill a pedophile to protect my child" ok but would you teach your child how to say no? even to adults? even to adults you like? would you teach your child the words "penis" and "vulva" and then use them? would you let them ask questions about their body? would you answer them honestly? would you learn how to cope with your feelings when you talk about human bodies, so they don't feel ashamed? would you set a positive example for how you talk about your body? would you tell your child they don't have to hug or kiss anyone? would you tell your family the same? would you stand by them when they refuse to hug someone? even someone you know has never done anything to hurt them? would you let your child avoid food they don't like? would you let you child avoid people they don't like? would you believe them? would you sit in the discomfort of not knowing all the answers and not take it out on them? would you love your child the same if someone did hurt them? would you make them feel valued just as they are? would you let them talk to doctors or nurses in private? would you let them express their feelings? would you show interest in their life? would you let your child say no to you? would you help your child feel safe coming to you when they make a mistake? would you apologize to your child? would you believe them? would you put aside your anger to focus on what would make your child feel safe and loved? would you put your ego aside for your child? would you take your child's concerns seriously? would you listen to your child? would you believe them?

[shychick-52]

I would both do all those things AND kill a pedo to protect my child, if I had to.

[thecourtofcaligula]

Yesss

[silvaurum]

i'm gonna add this comment by @papercrane:

"Maya angelou's family killed a pedophile that raped her, and that just traumatized her more. "I thought that I had caused the man’s death, because I had spoken his name. That was my seven-and-a-half-year logic. So I stopped talking for five years." Read I know why the caged bird sings."

and here is my comment:

the fantasy of killing a pedophile to defend your child is... an escape from reality. as with all fantasies where a single act of violence stands for a lifetime of effortful care. it lets us off the hook for the day to day labor of actually protecting the human beings around us. it gives us an excuse to look away from what abuse actually looks like.

it allows us to ignore that setting boundaries is a daily practice. it allows us to ignore the subtle ways in which we punish children for having boundaries. it allows us not to think about things we can do, the effort we can put in, in smaller repeated ways, to be kind and caring. to be safe to talk to.

it is a grand gesture that, were you to actually go through with it, would neither prevent the harm that you fear nor help your child to heal from it. it is an idea with no bearing on reality for 99.99% of people, while rape and abuse are a reality for a large fraction of people.

it is not useful to imagine killing a pedophile. it is not useful to claim you would kill a pedophile. it wouldn't be useful to actually attempt to kill a pedophile in almost any situation.

it is useful to think about how you can help your child know they can get help. they can say no. they can tell adults to stop. they deserve to be comfortable. they deserve to be informed.

the entire point of the post is that your child will not be saved by your imagined wrath. the entire point is that your day to day actions, and your attitude towards children as people, are more impactful to your child's well-being. far more realistic. more important.

not least because your child doesn't need you to be wrathful. they need your love. they need care. they need attention.

meanwhile, the public performance of wanting to kill child abusers doesn't do anything to child abusers. most child abusers believe they are doing the right thing for their children.

saying you want to kill abusers doesn't signal anything good to children, either. as others have said, it makes children more afraid to speak up and ask for help. that might be their mom, their coach, their troop leader. it gives those abusers leverage; the children cannot tell if they want things to be stable.

and it makes it harder for adults to BELIEVE children, too! because if their child was really abused, then they've staked their honor on committing that violence, even if it was against their brother or spouse or grandpa or pastor or neighbor or their other kid's favorite babysitter. and if they don't want to do that, well... then they must decide whether they believe completely their child, or whether their child's boundaries must really be respected, or... if maybe it's impossible to know.

how many abuse survivors have tried to disclose, only to be told that so-and-so wouldn't do that, or they didn't mean it, because so-and-so loves you and we all like so-and-so. this dichotomy goes both ways, psychologically. if a child abuser is entirely evil and has to be killed, then someone who's not entirely evil and i don't want to kill can't be a child abuser. this must be something else. there must be a mistake.

you can not adequately protect your children from abuse if you hold on to this idea. i am telling you. your insistence that killing pedophiles will protect your children is holding you back. it is not useful. it is not cute to talk about how much you want to do a single act of violence to abusers as if that would ever be enough to outrun the culture of abuse and the dehumanization of children in our society. you cannot cling to this like a talisman that would ward off any harm your children may come to. you cannot escape reality by telling yourself you'd be a total badass and kill that bad guy dead. this is not helpful.

[hypokeimena]

#Also. there's another step sometimes after #child abuser is an evil person you want to kill → someone you don't want to kill can't possibly be a child abuser #→ find someone you wanted to kill anyway and decide They were the evil child abuser and kill them instead. #At some point you must confront that this is a lynching fantasy! #there is no set of perfect hurdles and constraints you can set up on who it applies to that makes it #incapable of sliding back into being a lynching fantasy. #Thats so deep in the cultural roots of this whole fervor that it can't be cut out. (via @screambirdscreaming)

[starcatboy]

Obi-Wan Kenobi does not have “Catholic guilt” because he is not Catholic nor is he a part of a religion or culture that resembles Catholicism.

[antianakin]

"But Anakin was manipulated by Palpatine-"

The consequences of his choices are still his fault.

"But Anakin was sad-"

The consequences of his choices are still his fault.

"But Anakin didn't mean to-"

Yes he did and even if he didn't, the consequences of his choices are still his fault.

"But Anakin was just trying to-"

The consequences of his choices are still his fault.

"But what about Palpatine?"

This ain't about him.

[jaydude1992]

"But the Jedi Council-"

First, whatever bad blood developed between them and Anakin after the Clone Wars started, it evidently wasn't enough to stop him ratting out Palpatine to them, and massive paranoia about Padmé was the sole reason he got cold feet about this. Second, again, the consequences of his choices are still his fault.

[antianakin]

In fairness, I think Anakin's "bad blood" with the Council as such starts immediately in the sense that Anakin appears to mistrust them literally from the get-go in TPM. If you rewatch the scene where they're testing him in TPM, he gets defensive when they ask him questions and he tries to lie to them (in the original script, which you can find online, he actually gets quite angry with them regarding questions about his mother). And this is before they've even DONE anything, it's literally their first time meeting at all, so he has no reason to mistrust them at this point. They're being super professional, obviously, they're not being super warm and cuddly here, but they're not being unkind, either. The Council itself has done nothing to truly CAUSE Anakin's defensiveness, but it's still very much there.

I tend to attribute this to Anakin having an ingrained lack of trust towards authorities in general as a result of his experience on Tatooine. But what's interesting is that he seems to apply this to the Council AS A WHOLE rather than to the Council members INDIVIDUALLY. He obviously maintains a strong relationship with Obi-Wan even after Obi-Wan becomes a part of the Council, but in moments when he's having to speak to Obi-Wan when he's acting as part of the whole, Anakin gets more defensive. In TCW, you see Anakin being on perfectly good terms with people like Kit Fisto, Adi Gallia, Shaak Ti, and even Ki-Adi-Mundi. He makes a FEW pithy comments to Mace, but even those feel like gentle teasing rather than genuine complaints and their interactions are generally fairly positive. And he shows a LOT of concern over Yoda during the Force ghost arc. And of course you can see it best in the Deception arc when Anakin is told point blank that Obi-Wan is the one who wanted to keep him in the dark and he continues to rage about how "The Council" lied to him. He even tries to ask Obi-Wan if he knows how many times HE'S been lied to by "The Council."

As ridiculous as this separation is, it's also just... very clearly how Anakin approaches members of the Council. So when he goes to Mace to tell him about Palpatine, you could make a solid argument that he isn't trusting "The Council" with this information, he's choosing to trust MACE with the information. Like logically he knows that Mace is a member of the Jedi Council, of course he does, but it seems to be easier for him to EXTEND that trust to an individual as opposed to an authoritative body. "The Council" are the ones who failed Ahsoka, "The Council" lied to him about Obi-Wan's death, "The Council" are the ones who don't trust him. But Mace is not "The Council," Mace is just Mace. He doesn't trust "The Council," but he does want Mace's approval and trust in return, so he does what he knows he's SUPPOSED to do and tells him about Palpatine being a Sith.

And then yes, of course, his fear of losing Padme overrides what he knows he's SUPPOSED to do.

But yeah, my primary rebuttal to the accusation of "But the Jedi Council" is that Anakin doesn't trust them FROM THE OUTSET, before they've even done anything to CAUSE that mistrust. So while you can claim that their rejection of him has a lasting impact on their relationship, ANAKIN is the one who starts that relationship with a lack of trust and brings that to their first interaction and uses everything after that as validation of that opinion, even if he can recognize that the individual members are good people that he does like and trust most of the time.

And no matter what mistakes anyone thinks the Council may have made regarding Anakin, it still doesn't make Anakin any less responsible for the consequences of his own choices.

[short-wooloo]

LET. GRAHAM HAMILTON. PLAY. YOUNG. LUKE SKYWALKER!

[phoenixyfriend]

That one person blocked me and several others for pointing out that they're not correct, but you know what, let's chat:

"The Jedi brought about their own downfall" is not the message of the prequels. In fact, it's pretty explicitly a story about how an evil space wizard fucked them over at every turn.

But also

Saying that current Jedi teachings are responsible for the really, really old split is kind of insane since a lot of current Jedi teachings are them going "Wow! Let's make sure that doesn't happen again because they all lose their shit and kill a whole lot of people!"

The 'negative' contemporary teachings that people like to say made Anakin fall are in large part things instated to Prevent More Sith.

A big part of this argument is just that like. Sith can only come from Force Users. Dark Force Users cannot be Sith unless they are trained. The trained Force Users are Jedi. Statistically, the only way to be a Sith is to either be found and raised by a Sith, or fall as a Jedi.

And statistically, there aren't a lot of Sith around to raise more Sith.

And the Jedi are one of the few places to train Force Users.

So like. "Why was the person who invented a deadly fighter jet someone who had a masters in engineering?" probably because people who don't have a master's in engineering are really, really unlikely to be able to invent a new fighter jet.

Even when MOST of the masters-degree engineers are working on things like normal cars or buildings or medical equipment.

Is getting an engineering degree thus the thing that turns people into deadly fighter jet designers? Or is it maybe an external factor that goes "hey, we should get the people that can do engineering to engineer us a deadly thing."

Even when the base program is, in theory,* neutral or even positive and full of people who want to do things like make fish-recognition systems for dams to let salmon through without compromising the function of the dam.

*Yes I know that engineering programs are often not morally neutral and that a lot of people go into these programs wanting to make the world worse. Feel free to swap this out for people going into medicine and then getting pressured into making bioweapons or something idk I'm not your mom.

[animentality]

[professorsparklepants]

Role swap au where Zuko was the Avatar who got frozen for a hundred years, so when he’s rescued from the ice instead of a goofy twelve year old Katara catches this mysterious teenager with long hair and a cool scar and a fucking DRAGON

Katara: BOY???? HOT BOY?????? HOT TEENAGE BOY?????????

Zuko: *speaks*

Katara: nevermind I hate him

[brawltogethernow]

How does Aang factor into this? I ask because the more I think about it the more I want him to somehow be trying to capture the Avatar.

[professorsparklepants]

Aang is 112 years old, decided he was going to be Zuko’s airbending teacher, and refuses to take no for an answer

[brawltogethernow]

Aang: Aw, the new Avatar doesn’t want me. Aang: *gets out a weighted net* Time for Plan B then.

[professorsparklepants]

JDJSHJABDBFJSH

[brawltogethernow]

Look, you know how you keep a net from falling on you? YOU AIRBEND IT, SUCKA. Air comes right after fire in the cycle so it’s not like the guy has any other options. Do you want a flaming net falling on you? No? Then learn to airbend. Or this tiny old man will cart you away like a trussed turkey and lecture you about the power of laughter, going with the flow, opening your chakras, and other hippie shit.

[brawltogethernow]

Sokka, slouching against a fence, not moving: Oh nooooooo, that creepy old man stole the Avataaaaaaaaaar. Sokka, sitting down on the ground: We should dooooo something. Sokka, pulling out his lunch: Otherwise he might actually learn something. That would be teeeerrible. Katara, indignant rage coursing through her body: Sokka!!!!!!!! We have to go look for him!!!! Sokka: Might! Actually! Learn! Something! Katara! Katara: *wavers* Katara, also sitting down: We have to go look for him…. *gets out her own sandwich* But, maybe after lunch.

[professorsparklepants]

I love that this transforms Aang’s role in the full Team Avatar familial situation from the baby of the family to the Grandpa with weird hobbies

[wetwareproblem]

My brain, immediately after the “Aang won’t take no for an answer” post:

Aang: I’m gonna ride him! *jumps on Zuko’s shoulders*

[wetwareproblem]

Actually, I thought a bit more about this: If Aang is “grandpa figure who won’t fucking stop teaching Zuko to be a better and more spiritually fulfilled person,” then what is Iroh doing?

And then it hit me.

Iroh: *sitting in a teahouse at a paisho table* Iroh, deadpan: I must capture the last airbender.  Iroh: It is the only way to make sure the powe rof the Avatar won’t be turned on the Fire Nation. Iroh: Only then will I be redeemed in the eyes of the Fire Lord for my failure at Ba Sing Se. Iroh: … Iroh: Anyway, it’s your turn.

About half of the B plots are just Iroh finding new ways to feign incompetence and bad luck so that his political watchdog can’t prove that he’s letting Aang - and by extension Zuko - get away.

[wetwareproblem]

@ray10k

[dysperdis]

Sometimes Iroh plays paisho with Aang, whose entire disguise during these games consists of a painfully fake mustache.

[wetwareproblem]

AANG WAS THE OTHER PLAYER IN THAT SCENE OF COURSE IT’S PERFECT (the moustache is just a bit of Appa’s fur tied in a string)

[eternalgirlscout]

i think about this post all the time and if i may, i would like to suggest keeping the banished royalty angle for zuko.

he was the eldest son of fire lord sozin, who knew the avatar was the greatest threat to the fire nation, but also knew the new one would be a firebender and he couldn’t exactly merc his own people, now could he? but he always planned to order a convenient little assassination on whoever the new avatar turned out to be and in the meantime took out the air temples so that avatar couldn’t learn the next element in the cycle. of course, when it turns out to be his son, sozin, stellar dad that he is, thinks “if you want something done right” and shoots a fire blast at his firstborn.

zuko enters the avatar state, blows up half the palace, etc etc as one does, gets a nasty scar for his trouble, and escapes, hence why he was hanging out far enough south to necessitate katara and sokka cracking open a cold boy a century later.

all this is to say 1. i think it’s a good way to maintain zuko’s background and characterization in an au like this and 2. it leads to a secret second roleswap

because this makes zuko iroh’s uncle.

[bisexualbaker]

Reblogging again for Katara and Sokka cracking open a cold boy.

[cheesenames]

he's so funny

[paulinagilart]

palpatine, giggling to himself: sheevs you sly dog you’ve done it again

[howdidthisevenhappenanyway]

I think every night palps has an hour where he seals himself up in a soundproof room and thinks of all the games he played that day, and laughs and laughs and kicks his feet

[samuel-the-blonde22]

Something that I saw that's still boggling my mind is that: "the Jedi Council could have saved itself if it was just nicer to Anakin."

And... there is just something so gross and insulting to me about that.

Like... "oh, if only they were nicer to him! If only they could have pandered to his every need! Then he couldn't have felt the need to MURDER EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM!"

...

What?

Are you telling me that the genocide of an entire people was justified because of the Council not being nice enough?

That they deserved to die because a few members didn't give Anakin anything he wanted?

That it was their own fault that they died?

[samuel-the-blonde22]

[short-wooloo]

It's also disgusting because we are seeing so much of this shit in real life, this reeks of that "men have no choice but to vote for the most abhorrent disgusting idiots imaginable because women aren't being nicer!"

[fellthemarvelous]

I think the thing that really annoys me the most about people who claim "Anakin was the real victim in the prequels" in order to justify his actions is that it literally mirrors the real life ways in which the actions of men (specifically, white men) are consistently justified and blame is always shifted to the victims.

Fandom loves to blame Mace Windu (a Black man) more than all the other Jedi for Anakin's problems because Mace "didn't trust him" (which is also complete bullshit up until Revenge of the Sith). Mace actually got along with and trusted Anakin (Attack of the Clones and The Clone Wars showed us proof of this), but he didn't coddle Anakin. And it turns out he was right not to trust Anakin during Revenge of the Sith because Anakin ended up betraying him. That is not Mace's fault. Anakin failed to regulate his emotions and the entire galaxy paid the price.

Like yeah, Anakin had a shitty start in life. As a young child, he and his mother were slaves and that definitely had an impact on him psychologically. There is no fucking denying that.

But I continue seeing people act like Anakin slaughtering children during Order 66 was an understandable reaction to his fear of losing Padme after losing his mother (someone actually tried to argue this with me). Padme herself was horrified by what he had done, especially knowing he "did it for her".

Anakin's rampage during Order 66 was not a valid crash out. It was not. It was evil. It was monstrous. It was inexcusable. The Jedi did nothing at all to deserve what happened to them. Nothing at all. Nothing. There is no argument that can be made that will ever justify what Anakin did to the Jedi Order.

There's nothing wrong with having empathy for Anakin, but empathy doesn't erase accountability. It's not the fault of the Jedi that Anakin chose not to regulate his emotions. The Jedi couldn't control Anakin's actions, and that's the whole point. Palpatine couldn't control Anakin's actions either. Every horrible thing Anakin did as Darth Vader was Anakin's choice.

It's just exhausting watching Anakin constantly get infantilized to the point that his choices are always blamed on the people he hurt the most. The Jedi. Padme. Obi-Wan. Ahsoka.

What happened to Anakin as a child does not exempt him from accountability for his actions as an adult, nor does it make Anakin's choices anyone else's fault. The Jedi trained him the best they could, but Palpatine's dark side influence was stronger (the war really helped too). He knew what he was doing was wrong when he was doing it. He knew he was wrong for what he did to the Tusken Raiders in Attack of the Clones (like why do you think he didn't tell Obi-Wan???). He cried before slaughtering the younglings hiding in the Jedi Council chamber. He cried after slaughtering the Separatist leaders on Mustafar.

Neither Padme nor Obi-Wan are to blame for Anakin's choice to Force choke Padme. Anakin made the choice to do that. He was very angry and instead of behaving in a rational and civilized manner, he physically harmed the woman he sacrificed the entire Jedi Order for because she was going to leave him.

Understanding someone's suffering does not justify the harm they cause. Anakin continued to do really horrible things even though he knew it was wrong. Acting like someone else is to blame for Anakin's choices removes his agency and misses the entire point of what makes Anakin Skywalker such a tragic character in the first place.

Could the Jedi have handled Anakin's issues better? Perhaps(????), but let's not forget that Anakin spent three years deceiving the Jedi Order so they had no idea what he was doing behind their backs, they didn't know about the vision of Padme dying or that Palpatine was grooming him, and they were operating under wartime pressure and a lot of political manipulation. The Jedi were not omniscient.

Just because the Jedi failed to save Anakin does not mean they caused his actions. His pain does not justify his actions. He chose to lead the 501st into the Jedi Temple and made the very active choice to kill innocent children who were not even remotely involved with the war at all. They were at school and a man they all looked up to chose not to control his emotions, came in and murdered almost all of them. We literally watch the news in this ridiculous country always try to find ways to justify the actions of white men who chose not to control their emotions and who chose to walk into schools and slaughter innocent children and their teachers. We watch people on Fox "News" try to justify the actions of those men and place blame on everyone else, and it's usually some form of "maybe if people had been nicer to him he wouldn't have done it" in order to reframe the perpetrator as the victim. I see so many "the Jedi weren't nice enough to Anakin" (which isn't even true) or "if they had made Anakin a Jedi Master he wouldn't have slaughtered them" type of statements in this fandom and honestly it just blows my mind.

I never see anyone applying those justifications to female characters, that's for damn sure. Reva was treated with hostility despite the fact she was basically doing the same thing as Anakin (taking out her pain on others), except she was one of those children who survived Anakin's rampage on the Jedi Temple. She was literally one of his victims and fandom tears her apart. What Anakin did to her was deeply traumatizing and she had no one to guide her, no one to help her cope with what happened to her. She was thrust into a dangerous situation with a target painted on her back and did what she thought she had to. There is so much context for her actions but she doesn't get nearly the level of empathy from fandom that Anakin does despite being one of his personal victims. I'm not justifying Reva's actions either, but it's wild how the double standards are so obvious. (Reva slander is not welcome here at all.)

And portions of the fandom will continue to blame everyone else except for Anakin for the choices that Anakin made of his own free will.