#War and enslavement

[furious-blueberry0]

"Oh but the Jedi were so cold and detached and they even condemned love, they were so cruel"

The Jedis were the literal definition of Agape love, but I guess that for you people the only type of love that exists and is valid is the one that leads you to fucking

[softieskywalker]

sabine continuing the disaster lineage feels so fitting. she's just as insane, rebellious and with an incredibly questionable morally grey past as her predecessors. war crimes lineage is perfect for her, no wonder she struggled so much when kanan was teaching her, the mace windu lineage doesn't allow insanity like that

[sarafangirlart]

Imagine if I made an au where Perseus adopts Medusa’s kids, ppl will rightfully call me deluded bc he literally killed their mom and Medusa’s sisters are right there and deserve to keep whatever they have left of their sister. This is how stupid y’all’s au where Odysseus adopts Astyanax.

[mylittleversaille]

Every day I see more and more pop myth takes that make me want to pull my eyelashes out. No, Ares was not a protector of women. No, Aphrodite was not a war goddess (and you know what, being the goddess of sex and lust and beaut is okay!). No, Hera is not an irredeemable villain. No, Zeus is not evil incarnate. No Achilles isn’t without fault or some ‘gay softboi’ icon (he’s literally presented in the Iliad as someone who is proud to a fault. You’re supposed to recognize that he’s selfish and arrogant). No, Demeter was not an overbearing mother nor was Hades some sort of misunderstood, brooding knight in shining armour. Medea is allowed to commit heinous crimes and still be a sympathetic character. Jason… deserves all the hate he gets, respectfully.

Off the top of my head, I think Helen is one of the few people who gets complex, interesting characterization in modern retellings and discourse, ironically enough. She’s allowed to be vain and aware of her own beauty while also often having a great deal of agency. At the same time, she is frequently depicted as both victim and as offender. She’s allowed to want to be in Troy, but also to miss her husband and daughter.

Some days I feel like I could write essays about pop mythology and the way people reduce mythological figures to one dimensional caricatures. And how these retellings are never as progressive as people think, fixing some issues but exacerbating others. I do think retellings end up being an excellent resource for identifying what social issues bother us and how we would like to address them.

For example, we see a lot of feminist retellings that want to show women as capable of the same things as men, and in so doing they reject or deride their own femininity. But a retelling that is ultimately saying that masculinity is more interesting or valuable than femininity isn’t a truly feminist retelling, but it does show us that our society struggles to find femininity compatible with strength or courage.

[stairset]

I know certain parts of Star Wars fandom are determined to see literally everything about the Jedi in the most bad faith way possible but one of the most baffling examples to me is when people act like they look down on all other force religions and don't take the time to understand them because they see their own way as superior when there is quite literally nothing to suggest that. Like the only other force users they have any actual beef with on principle are the Sith, which I'd say is justified considering the Sith are a bunch of fascist pricks who constantly try to take over the galaxy. Literally all the others are either allies of the Jedi or the Jedi just leave them alone to do their thing.

[tokufan400]

Save or Enslave: Ahsoka Tano

[elizabethwydevilles]

I think that 'you're like a father too me' vs 'you were my brother' is crucial in understanding the Anakin and Obi-Wan dynamic and their particular brand of dysfunctional communication.

[heirtotheempire]

As I read through the Ascendency trilogy, it is becoming more and more clear that the Chiss Ascendency is as hateful as the Empire. And it's odd how few people call that out. I think it is because Zahn does a fantastic job at hiding it through Chiss POV, but even then, the Chiss are still incredibly xenophobic and controlling. Yes, this includes Thrawn, he isn't the saint that so many people like to paint him as and frankly could be argued as worse.

I keep thinking about Ar'alani admitting she never saw non-Chiss as people. She is brilliant and kind, but only to other Chiss. We view her in a purely positive light because the POVs in these books are primarily Chiss, who agree with her. Of course her mindset is normal amongst Chiss, of course it isn't questioned, of course Ar'alani herself never questions it despite her experience off-world. It takes a direct and pretty personal interaction for her to think twice, and even then it is difficult for her to accept the humanity of a non-Chiss. They are lesser in her eyes. They are lesser in the eyes of most, if not all, of the Chiss.

It is fascinating, it really is. It's an interesting look into a xenophobic society without the initial hate from the reader. Because xenophobia is born out of misunderstanding and perpetuated systems of ignorance. If a similar situation was told but through the eyes of Imperial officers, fewer people would be willing to see the nuances. Because Empire=Bad and anyone associating with it is also Bad, right?

But, propaganda and cycles of ignorance are also to blame. Not every Imperial Officer was born hating aliens. Hell, even TARKIN started out incredibly sympathetic to alien species according to the canon novel by James Luceno. But his family taught him otherwise, just as the Chiss Ascendency teaches its own children see other species as lesser.

This mentality from the Ascendency is also seen in Thrawn: Treason with how Eli Vanto is treated simply for being human. The majority of officers hate his existence, insist he must prove himself (despite being at a lower rank than he was at when with the Empire), and are distrustful of him. Very similar to how Ronan treats Thrawn in the same novel.

This isn't, like, a call to love Chiss characters any less, but it's a bit odd to imply that Thrawn, or any other Chiss, would be against the Empire for the same reasons the Rebellion is. The Ascendency doesn't like the Empire because it could encroach on their rule, their space- not because it's xenophobic and oppresses too many people to count. The two systems are remarkably similar, which may be part of why Thrawn was inclined to help the Empire. It is familiar, and a system Thrawn himself has never opposed, even without taking Legends into account.

(SIDE NOTE: PLEASE DO NOT BRING UP SPOILERS FOR GREATER GOOD OR LESSER EVIL ON THIS POST. I AM STILL READING THOSE BOOKS AND WOULD LIKE TO ENJOY THEM SPOILER-FREE)

[pyromaniac4198]

Rebel: quick, we need a distraction

Luke: I've got just the thing

Luke: *yells at Darth vader for not sending his money back to beru*

[prolibytherium]

I don't want to read retellings of Greek mythology that are 'feminist' by virtue of the protagonists having weirdly contemporary perspectives on gender and misogyny or that tries to make men who fully participate in a culture of enslavement and rape in war Not Do That, I want the characters be fully of the historical culture that is being engaged with, with the 'feminist' component being from the narrative and a nuanced handling of an extremely misogynist society and finding the humanity in people who are very unlike the contemporary reader in terms of culture and context.

And yet 90% of it is like, the 'good' women being like "I think women are badass girlbosses and should vote and also I am SOOOO nice to my slaves" (if the slavery that is near-ubiquitous in the ancient Mediterranean is even acknowledged) and the 'good' men being like "I'm not like other guys: I think women should vote too"

[theodysseyofhomer]

pisses you off by reading lots of greek drama and loving medea the most in every translation

[clove-pinks]

As HMS Victorious lay at anchor in Lynnhaven Bay, off Norfolk, in the early morning hours of 10 March 1813, a boat approached from the Chesapeake shore. Its occupants, nine American Black men, drew the attention of the sailors in the guard boat circling the 74 gun ship. The men were runaway slaves. After a cautious inspection, the guard boat’s crew towed them to the Victorious where the nine Black men climbed up the ship’s side and entered freedom. This scene would be repeated many times during the coming twenty-one months. [...] Soon entire families of slaves ran to the British. On 14 May five men, two women and three children came away from the mainland reaching shelter aboard HMS Dragon.

— Thomas Malcomson, "Freedom by Reaching the Wooden World: American Slaves and the British Navy during the War of 1812" (The Northern Mariner vol. 22)

HMS Dragon by Antoine Roux (Wikimedia Commons).

[wantonlywindswept]

arla escapes DW ficbit

bit of a slower story than i've been writing of late; will see how far it goes. i don't think of arla as a super popular character in SW? tho that might just be bc her character is so obscure.

but she's basically free real estate imo and i am RUNNING with it

--

Arla spends two weeks in a shitty flophouse on an even shittier planet in the Outer Rim, jumping at every sound outside her door and pulling her blaster on shadows, before she realizes that she might actually have gotten away.

She gouged all three tracking chips from beneath her skin before her escape attempt. The ship she was given for her last assignment will have reached its final destination by now, set on a collision course with a star halfway across the galaxy. The droid that removed the explosive implant at the back of her neck auto-wiped its records, and she scoured her armor clean of bugs and paint in a single-minded frenzy that left her hands caked in blue and black.

It was the first job she was allowed in the Core, after years of faking loyalty and swallowing her pride and fury in order to rise in Death Watch's ranks. They previously hadn't trusted her not to disappear into the massive populaces found on Core worlds, where anonymity was the norm and people had enough that they could afford to be kind to strangers, instead of scrabbling desperately for their own survival. Tracking implants, on-board ship cameras, regular comm check-ins: they held tight to her leash with their grubby little fingers even as they finally allowed her to stray.

They were smart not to trust her--but not smart enough to keep her from disappearing. 

If they haven't found her yet, it's likely they won't find her at all.

When that fact finally sets in, Arla curls up in a corner of the room and wastes a couple hours on a hysterical, weeping breakdown, because why the fuck not?

She's free.

[aspenaspenaspenaspenaspen]

Dex says:

Eat The Rich✨✨

[antianakin]

The Jedi did not enslave the clones and are not intended to be interpreted as having led a slave army. Anakin Skywalker, however, enslaves an entire galaxy by starting with the clones and is intended to be interpreted as a stone-cold selfish greedy fascist bitch who definitely leads a slave army more than once.