#I think it's a rather old concept - many people sent their children to be wards of those who had more power | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sullustangin · 3 years

Text

Fearful Avoidant Attachment and the Single Spy

Caveat: I’m not a counselor of any sort, and I’m applying labels to fictional characters. Don’t take this too seriously.

This post has been kicking around in different forms in my prompt document for awhile. I will start posting my Yavin fic this weekend. A major element of this fic will be the dynamic between Theron and the playable character/love interest. Their interactions will be informed by how I view his attachments. I’ve put some of this into the fic series already.

“Attachment” in the Star Wars universe is the idea, according to George Lucas, that Jedi should love everyone but not get attached. “Attached” in this context is possession, greed, being willing to do things for individuals rather than the greater good, and ultimately the fear of loss. Attachment is a negative concept in Jedi philosophy.

However, I would argue that while this philosophy is in the back of Theron’s head, Jedi attachment concepts are not what makes Theron’s personal life messy. It’s the personal context surrounding that teaching and his life events that shape this. So let’s look at real life attachment theory.

In its most basic form, attachment theory is the idea that children need to develop a positive relationship with a caregiver to turn out ok. If the child is neglected, then they will have problems forming healthy attachments to others. There’s a lot of caveats to this theory. Some put the threshold of ‘must have positive relationship by x age’ to age 2 or age 5. Others state that this is problematic, because if a child loses their caregiver and passes into the hands of a less affectionate or downright abusive caregiver, then their positive attachment formation by age x doesn’t count for much.

There are several different types of attachment that a person can have. A secure attachment is what most healthy relationships are rooted in. People feel safe and secure within themselves and within the relationship. Jedi can be attached in this fashion, even if they don’t call it this; the Jedi have orderly boundaries and a clear understanding of what their associations entail. They have care systems for younglings and padawans, which were like pre-modern apprenticeships. They are secure within themselves as Jedi and in their relationships outside the order. They are at peace.

An insecure attachment has a flaw in it; something is wrong in how the person relates to themselves and others in relationships, platonic, romantic or otherwise. One type is dismissive or avoidant; the attachments are actively avoided, so the person is often isolated and rejects others and their friendly overtures. Another type is anxious or preoccupied; people tend to get very clingy or possessive with anyone they latch onto, which can cause the relationship to self-destruct (hi, Anakin).

Then there is fearful avoidant attachment, the label I think fits Theron Shan, our favorite high-quality spy and absolute emotional disaster. In theory, Theron tries to avoid deep emotional attachments because he’s scared of being left behind or not having those attachments reciprocated. At the same time, he desperately wants those attachments and relationships, but the potential of failure makes him avoid or even sabotage the relationship. That results in an on-going war between Theron and his feelings. To quote Psychalive, “the person [he wants] to go to for safety is the same person [he is] frightened to be close to. As a result, [he has] no organized strategy for getting [his] needs met by others.”

Why does Theron have attachment issues?

Some accuse Satele Shan or Jace Malcom of being “bad parents.” There’s a problem with this premise: although there is a biological relationship, neither Satele nor Jace had a parent-child relationship with Theron. Jace didn’t even know Theron existed until the child was 26, so he couldn’t act in any capacity. Satele gave Theron up to be raised by someone else; she opted out of the role of mother and did not talk to him as mother-and-son until Theron was 26. There isn’t an abusive or neglectful relationship here because there isn’t a relationship, period. Much like romantic relationships, it’s better to have no relationship than a bad one. Jace and Satele didn’t raise Theron. They were strangers to him until he was an adult. They were never his caretakers. Who did Theron have attachments to?

Theron was raised by a Jedi named Ngani Zho, who had been Satele Shan’s master when she was a padawan. After Satele gave birth in a cave on some planet, Zho took the child and raised him as his own son. This was irregular, honestly. Jedi younglings that express some sort of control over the Force are typically put into a creche at the Jedi Temple; we’ve seen this in the Star Wars prequel films. Guss Tuno references this in SWTOR, as he was chagrinned to be in class with a bunch of five-year-olds in bathrobes. Theron was raised by Zho directly and they were constantly traveling, based upon comments we read in The Lost Suns comic and in the novel Annihilation. Theron never entered the creche because he never manifested signs he was Force-sensitive – not even a little like Guss.

Zho traveled with Theron until the boy was an adolescent. Then, Theron was told by Zho to travel to the Jedi Temple at Haashimut to receive more training; he could do no more for him. The trip through a desert nearly killed the boy. When Theron had recovered, it fell to Master Till’in to tell him he would not be a Jedi. Ever.

Instead of telling Theron or notifying Satele about the boy’s lack of Force aptitude, Zho sent him onward and then disappeared. There is no indication that Zho told anyone where he was going or why. When Theron met Zho again at age 23, the Master’s mind was scrambled and confused; he couldn’t give any answers to Theron about anything. Was there a mission he had been set on? Or did he just wander off on his own?

For storytelling purposes, it’s convenient to pair Zho’s departure with the aftermath of the Treaty of Coruscant. In the year Theron turned 13 (3653 BBY), the Great Galactic War ended with the Treaty of Coruscant, wherein the Sith Empire enforced demands on the Republic. The Sith won. Zho leaving could be tied to this (through a mission or quixotic urge), but the source material isn’t clear on the timing.

Theron’s life suddenly became very uncertain. His entire life had been built up to becoming a Jedi. To some extent, even though he hadn’t done anything wrong, Theron probably felt like he was a failure. We know he tried to fix this; in The Lost Suns, he acknowledged pursuing access to the Force through the Matukai Force tradition – being an ascetic. In Annihilation, he recalled and took particular umbrage at the “arrogance” of the Jedi – those that made him feel like any other path was second (or third or less)-best. This diminished over time, but the revelation about his lack of Force Sensitivity probably left Theron feeling very insecure about himself and who he was as an adolescent/young teen.

In terms of his relationships, Zho was gone with no forwarding address. The man Theron called his father was no longer reachable, and for another ten years, there would be no closure as to what happened to him. Zho had actively endangered Theron by sending him through a desert to Haashimut. Did he gamble that the boy’s Force Sensitivity would manifest in a life-threatening crisis or something? Who knows? Theron never went into the Jedi creche, so he didn’t have close peers or friends beyond pen pals at best. Theron had not spoken to his bio parents at all to this point, and he probably didn’t know many (if any) non-Force Sensitive kids. With his expulsion from Jedi society, Theron’s entire relationship network was gone.

This is important to understand -- Theron had been raised to not have attachments that would lead to selfishness or fear of loss, but he was raised to be able to love and care for others. He lived in a structure that fostered good psychological attachments (secure attachments) to the order and to his fellow sentients without possessiveness or jealousy. Theron knew his mother gave him up. He knew one day Zho would give his care over to another Master. He knew one day, he would leave the Temple to go out into the galaxy. Theron knew how the galaxy worked and his role in it...

..and then it was torn away from him. No more masters, no more knowledge of what came next, no way to ever work with his mother as a Jedi. His life to that point had been an illusion -- he was never able to access the Force, and Zho knew it. This left Theron as insecurely attached, as nothing that he anticipated for his life would ever happen, and he knew nobody that would accompany him into this new life.

External to all this, the Republic Theron was raised to serve was on the losing end of war. How the galaxy worked, as far as Theron knew to that point, was going to change. After Till’in told Theron the truth, all we know is that he spent some time in Haashimut before going elsewhere. We the viewer have no idea what happened to Theron from adolescence until he was 16, when he entered SIS per Annihilation. This may be a canon math/timing error, or it could be reasonable; Theron might have been able to get permission to join a government organization at 16. If Theron was in foster care or a ward of the state or something else, whoever was involved didn’t make an impact worthy of mention thus far in SWTOR canon.

Theron described Zho in The Lost Suns as “never reliable.” That was a 23-year-old looking back. Yet, he referred to him as his father in Annihilation three years later, and even eight years later in SWTOR: KotFE, he mentions that “Master Zho would be proud.” This seems contradictory. Additionally, in both The Lost Suns and Annihilation, SIS Director Marcus Trant expressed concern about Theron and his issues. Theron was a workaholic. Being a workaholic is actually a sign of having attachment issues; a person attaches themselves to work, not people Theron expressed desires to run away, go on vacation, and do new stuff… but he never did these things – couldn’t get away from the job.

Attachment theory states that a child has difficulty with attachments if they are abused or somehow neglected by their caretaker. The desert march definitely strikes me as falling into one of those categories, but again, Zho’s logic isn’t readily offered up to the viewer, nor are many details about Theron’s life as a traveling youngling. That all said, Zho’s traumatic departure probably caused attachment issues that had no other herald.

Why do the labels “fearful” and “avoidant” fit Theron?

Theron Shan as the player met him in Forged Alliance SWTOR was a professional. Flirting was ignored, mildly acknowledged, or, rarely, fully reciprocated. There was no physical contact between Theron and his asset. This doesn’t seem off or irregular until his romance is compared to that of Lana Beniko. She didn’t have the same issues expressing affection for her asset on Imp side; she touched their face and gave them a hug by the time the spies went under deep cover after Rakata Prime. Even if the player did not romance Lana, Lana herself was keen to make a team and bust open the conspiracy; she wasn’t as willing to go it alone.

Avoidant people tend to refrain from contact, and they like being independent. They don’t do well in teams. Sound familiar? Fearful avoidants also have the concern that they will fail their partner or that their partner will fail them. If the player was Imp side, Theron was a jerk well into the Rishi storyline. Eventually, Theron did come around. His dialogue and follow-up letter reflect the fact that he actually did want these connections and attachments. He enjoyed the time he had with the player.

This is particularly pronounced if Theron was romanced by the player on Rishi and Yavin; first physical contact occurred on Rishi with a kiss. If the player was Pubside, the fade-to-black and his comments on Yavin indicate they had sex. Those episodes of affection, paired with the Pub post-Yavin letter and dialogue, really emphasize the connection that was formed. Interestingly, Theron did not get a fade-to-black with the Imperial player. One might argue that he knew they were going to leave him, and so he couldn’t –wouldn’t—get attached.

…. And then Ziost happened. Theron refused to ask for help. He didn’t want to depend on that attachment. He was distant on Ziost, regardless of how far the relationship went, and if Pubside, he declined a drink afterwards.

Whatever transpired between Ziost and the Eternal Fleet Incident, it’s clear that a romanced Theron and the player never defined their relationship. There were certain boundaries that never were crossed. He’d “like to think” the player is dreaming of him, but he didn’t want to presume. Even after Theron got into a romantic relationship on Odessen, he still struggled with his ability to be attached, as evidence by his letters and expressions of affection and concern throughout the KotFE/KotET expansions.

One might argue that the traitor element of the Nathema Conspiracy was partially caused by Theron’s attachment issues: his independent streak, his inability to ask for help, his lack of faith in others to do the job right (not telling anyone the truth), his lack of faith in himself (his willingness to understand why the player might dump/exile him). If romanced, he gave one of his Holonet messages the subject line “I love you,” but even then, he did not clue the player into his self-made mission. Certainly, the Nathema Conspiracy happens because of Theron’s desperate desire to save the galaxy and the player at any cost – including the relationship itself and his life.

For those who let Theron live, the attachment issues have faded as Theron has gotten engaged/married and/or reformed a relationship with his bio parents… or the writers have moved on from Lana and Theron as companions. Regardless, we have to keep in mind that Theron is closing in on 40, and he has grown as a character since he first appeared in Star Wars media at age 23 (baby and adolescent only in flashbacks). His issues with his relationships, the Jedi, the Republic, and his bio parents have changed over the course of 17 years. In the last story patch, people who have romanced Theron received letters from both Theron and his mother about how good the player is for him, and it’s very satisfying to see how far he has come.

How does this label of ‘fearful avoidant’ manifest in your fanworks?

Since not everyone is into fic, I’ll drop this behind a cut.

Basically, my version of Theron wants love but is terrified of all the feelings and closeness that come with it. When people get close, he draws away, but still wants them to be close. Theron has had good relationships, but if it gets too serious, he runs. That’s the case for his last major relationship prior to my oc; his Mirialan girlfriend was drawing a tattoo to mark their relationship, and she wanted him to meet the parents. Theron noped out of there pretty hard by taking a long mission off Coruscant and sort of forgetting to tell her. There are several times where he takes a big step with Eva (my oc)– disclosure, physical intimacy, caring for her or letting her care for him – and then he just doesn’t contact her for the next few days. He dives into work to avoid her. Toward the end of their initial relationship, that will turn into weeks and months. He is freaked out when he does things with her that are intimate, sexual or not. He has a lot of fear that he will be left again, so he leaves first.

Theron also sets up a lot of rules and boundaries that the partner has to dance around to get in. After 300,000 words, I just completed a slow burn with the Rishi kiss, because Theron wouldn’t get involved with Eva until after the op to expose the conspiracy was over. There will be more rules once they get to Yavin.

When I was doing research on this, I read a clinical study that found that people with avoidant attachment issues are particularly fastidious about safe sex. They don’t want attachments to their lovers in the form of a disease or a child. Anxious attachments tend to eschew this and take the risk so they can be bound to someone. This is part of why I gave Theron a male birth control implant, but there will also be reference to his back-up (condoms) and back-up back-up (PreP) to ensure there aren’t any adverse consequences for him.

Theron is often alone, but that doesn’t make him lonely by default. In part, that might be due to his avoidance of attachments. Dude can pick up people at a bar and get laid. Theron isn’t adverse to sex, just intimacy. He can find someone to hook up, but that doesn’t mean there is anything beyond sex attached to it. Theron can and does get dates, and he can have relationships ... but that doesn’t mean he can make a healthy connection to the other person. I think his issues are more emotional/internal than they are caused by not getting enough physical contact or affection from others. People want to love him. People reach out to him to be friends or have a relationship. He just doesn’t want it; he avoids it. I imagine that this is partly the case with Jace and his SIS coworkers.

The last fearful avoidant feature I’ll give Theron in my series is the tendency to idealize relationships after they’re dead and over. When the relationship is no longer available, it is held up and made glorious, partially to enable the person not to pursue a different relationship; it’ll never be as good, so why try? This also calls in the tendency for fearful avoidants to fear not only screwing up the relationship themselves, but that others won’t live up to their expectations. Theron is a mess after the Eternal Fleet incident and never moves on from Eva. It’s reasonable when he thinks she’s alive, but for a good two years, he thinks she’s dead… and he can’t. With anyone else.

Unlike the game, I eventually send Theron to a therapist to deal with the fearful avoidant attachment issues. I figure if I’m going to give a fictional character a real-world label, I need to give him a real-world solution that might work.

#swtor #theron shan #character analysis #theron thursday #jedi #jedi philosophy #ngani zho

54 notes · View notes

rootfauna · 5 years

Text

Loss of the chance of life

A while ago I found out my grandmother was one of the many native american women who were forcibly sterilized. I wrote this article.

In 1972 Janet Clifton, an Osage woman, walked into the IHS in Clairemore, Oklahoma. For years she had been having severe pelvic cramps and they had become too much to bear. She was put in a gown and lead to a room in which sat the dreaded stirruped chair many women have despised since it’s invention. The anxiety is understandable even in modern times when women’s healthcare is arguably the most advanced it’s ever been. It’s frightening, then, to imagine approaching that chair in the 60’s and 70’s, when modern women’s healthcare was in it’s infancy, and for a Native American woman, it could be absolutely terrifying.

When Janet signed in to the clinic, she’d been asked the usual questions, one of which was ‘are you married’, which she was, and was asked if she had any children, which she did. Three to be exact. She was only twenty-five and all her children were born just under three years, so it is no surprise that when she was asked if she was religious she replied that she was Catholic. Christianity and native Americans have a strange relationship. The religion was used to justify atrocities done to us too numerous not only for this paper, but for anyone to ever list. Arguably it’s greatest crime was to mold itself into a cardboard beacon, offering native Americans sanctuary from it’s own ugliness. For centuries Native American men made the decision to convert for the rest of the family. The rules of life changed for them, but it’s unclear if they realized the changes it meant for their wives. Their roles in many nations were reduced, as was their agency over their bodies. Contraceptives in their earliest days were known throughout the world, including the Americas, yet now they were forbidden. As ridiculous and ineffective as they could be, they at least offered the illusion of body autonomy, mostly for women.

When Janet went to the IHS the Women’s Health Movement (WHM) had only recently begun, along with second wave feminism. It spoke loftily and justly about abortion rights and about changing the traditional maternity ward practices into more family oriented ones, with the fathers allowed in the delivery room. There was a resurgence of midwifery. However, these improvements did not scratch the blood soaked surface of Native American health care. As Janet lay in the chair, three white doctors entered the room. The Indian Clinic did not have any native doctors, so doctors were driven in from nearby Tulsa Oklahoma, thus continuing the tradition of white doctors working with an exclusively non-white clientele. “I felt like I was being experimented on,” she would later say. She would be in good company. A Google search of “experiments on native women” will instantly bring up several articles about the forced sterilization of Native American women, and many give examples of experimental procedures that were performed in front of many doctors under the guise of research. Janet, who only wanted treatment for what we now know as polycystic ovary syndrome, never knew she would join their ranks. “One of the doctors told me that they were going to burn the cysts off. The procedure was never really explained to me and it was probably a combination of me being a woman and being Native American. They thought I was too dumb to understand anyway.” Had she known more on the subject she might have thought he was referring to a ovarian wedge resection, a common treatment at the time. It involves opening the patient up in an operating theater and exposing the ovaries. The cysts are then carefully removed with a cauterization tool not only keep the cyst from bursting, but to ensure the ovary heals properly. Instead of doing this, Janet and her doctors remained in the exam room where he gave her a local anesthetic, inserted a cauterizing into her vaginally, and performed what was most likely a tubal litigation. This is the most common form of female sterilization and only severs the fallopian tubes. My grandmother’s painful ovaries would remain untouched and untreated.

“I remember smelling something burning,” recalled Janet, “I looked down and saw smoke.”She was sent home directly after the procedure, unaware of what had actually happened to her and uninformed of the possible side effects. There was pain, of course, and in a candid moment she also confessed that she was never able to feel sexual pleasure with her husband again. Worst of all, because there had been no attempt to treat the cysts, and the pain that started the entire ordeal returned within weeks.

Pain seems to be woven into the fabric of every Native American woman’s life and this has not gone unnoticed artists, native and non-native alike. When native women are not posing nude on a biker’s bicep, we are huddled into blankets, riding our horses, our backs bent and heads hung low. Sometimes we stand on hills, gazing at nothing with blank faces and sometimes we kneel by our tipis and look at the ground. Though the past few decades have brought forward more animated depictions of Native American women, my grandmother’s house was filled with the old fashioned kind. As a child, I thought they were pretty, if boring. I never perceived any greater meaning than a woman simply looking down. Maybe she was watching a bug. As a child I was also blissfully unaware of the majority of the atrocities faced by our people and what I did know, I largely new in name only. It wasn’t until I grew older that I’d look at these paintings and think ‘huh, she actually looks kinda sad’. Now I look at these paintings and think ‘she looks utterly defeated’. Knowing what really happened to us makes me notice details I never had before, like how so many of them have textbook thousand yard stares while portraits of chiefs and warriors in the same stye still seem to have fire in their eyes. The men are also more likely to be depicted upright, whether standing or on horseback, still tall in some way or another. The woman have deflated. We slump over our horse’s necks, we kneel, we sit. It seems as though these women have accepted that pain is just something they must endure silently and with dignity, whatever the source. My grandmother is not like these women, so when the pain that had sent her to the doctor in the first place returned, so did she.

The doctors made little effort with pretense this time - she would have a hysterectomy and that was that. At this point there was no reason to try and treat her as Janet could no longer have children, and in the end her hysterectomy would succeed in ridding her of her pain. Why then does it seem to hold so much more significance? European invaders managed to erase many aspects of various indigenous cultures, but some roots run too deep to be completely torn out and in so many of our cultures it was the female ability bring forth life that created the world. The association with women and new life was so strong that even in some nations it was observed that women sewed the seeds for the new crops and tended to them, but it was the men who reaped them. Their reasoning was that women brought life, and men took it. Some Lakota Sioux would not acknowledge a girl’s transition to womanhood until she has had a child. This doesn’t mean that a woman’s only value was her ability to have children and in many nations women held high political power, were religious leaders, and even warriors. Still, it is virtually impossible to completely separate a woman’s potential reproductive capabilities and how she was viewed in societies that place more value on the concept of new life, birth, or rebirth. So many Native American nations fell into this category, and on some level or another, a woman’s womb was sacred. In 1972, at age 25, my grandmother’s was ripped from her body.

From an outsiders perspective, it seems as though these sterilized women have become those broken women from the paintings. In doing research for this paper, I found very little. The ambiguity is unsettling. Is the near total absence of initial medical documentation a result of apathy towards Native American health, or an intentional coverup? Did the women affected not speak out about this at the time because of the taboo around reproductive systems? Was it shame, or a feeling that no one would listen anyway? I have to wonder, too, how many woman are like my grandmother who only now realizes what was done to her. Whitehorse also did not realize what happened to her until later. “I was trying to have more babies, but was having trouble getting pregnant, so I went to the IHS clinic. That’s when they told me about what they did to me,” She said. She had been sterilized during a previous surgery.“I was in so much pain when I went in for the appendectomy; they gave me a bunch of papers to sign. They never explained anything to me; I had no idea I was giving them permission to sterilize me.” she said. It wasn’t only abdominal pain that allowed doctors to trick women into sterilization. One of the more famous cases of sterilization involved two girls, both under fifteen years old, who were sterilized during surgery to remove their tonsils. It’s been estimated that between 1960 and 1970, for every seven native babies born, one woman was sterilized, culminating in roughly 25% of the potentially fertile female population. Even this was not enough of an attack on the Native American woman. Native American boarding schools, run by the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) where still common in that era. A 1971 census stated that approximately 35,000 Native American children lived in boarding schools rather than at home. In these schools, children were stripped of their language, their culture, their religion, their names, and often, their sanity. Abuse was rampant and the chances of escape were bleak. While non-native children were begging for bell bottoms and watching t.v, two native boys fled, only to freeze to death in their attempt to return home. Suicide rates amongst teenage boarders could reach as high as one hundred times the national average. The rest of the nation, if it noticed, soon turned away and continued to focus on disco. Native mothers could do little to stop the abuse of their children, but a growing number were being offered a choice. If they agreed to be sterilized, their existing children might be allowed to stay with them. It can’t be said if it was in defeat or defiance that a mother made her choice, whichever it was. It would a lie to say that no woman was defeated, and sat slumped over a bottle of whiskey rather than a horse.

However, when my grandmother was wheeled into the recovery bay, she discovered that she was not the only woman who refused stoop down and be silent, though she did not yet know what bond she shared with these women. They were a small group, all in various stages of recovery. They smiled and chatted if and when they could, and because the nurses were about as helpful as a match under water, they tended to each other. The women adjusted each others hospital beds by hand, fetched each other glasses of water and just as importantly, they kept each other in good spirits. Decades later, Janet will still smile and laugh when she remembers a woman that was truly fed up with the barely edible hospital food. “You guys want some pizza?” The woman had asked, and then she got up and climbed out the window. A while later she returned the same way, pizza in hand. They might have been neglected and in pain, but in that moment they were normal women diving into a pizza and giddy with their own mischief. It seems like such a small gesture, valuable in that it’s a light hearted tidbit from an otherwise tragic story, but it is so much more than that. Expand the perspective and you’ll find it’s really the story of how a Native American woman was had her reproductive organs seared into oblivion against her will by white doctors, was neglected by nurses in a recovery room filled with strangers, and this woman still had the strength and spark to climb out a window and return with pizza to share with her sisters. Our solidarity is our fortitude. Native women have an incredible ability to come together and to accomplish incredible things. One of they key elements that allows us to do this is our ability to communicate with each other, and despite what modern white hippies may think, we can’t do that with telepathy and talking animals. I would not have been able to tell my grandmother’s story without calling her and having several lengthy phone calls. This chapter of our history is in danger of being forgotten. It’s imperative we learn as much as we can, but that is not enough. It’s through communication that bond over our people’s losses and triumphs and encourage others to learn along with us. If I am to end this essay with one request, it is that when you read this chapter of our history, please read it out loud.

—- This essay is dedicate to Janet Stork, I cannot give enough thanks to my grandmother for letting me interview her. Rather than mourn her loss, she seemed happy throughout every conversation, as if she was glad that someone wanted to hear what she had to say. This is such a sensitive topic, one that would make many young students here cringe and shy away from, but my grandmother made every conversation a comfortable one. No question was off limits, there was no withholding of details. I feel so lucky to have a grandmother like her, and I’m amazed that it’s through her strength I exist today.

48 notes · View notes

uncommonfauna · 5 years

Text

3 notes · View notes