#ahsoka has severe mental issues

[sarcastic-sketches]

More Kitsune Thots

This AU was originally going to be Anakin being a bit of a slut throughout the galaxy but then Captain Rex happened. Ah. Anakin committed hard with the whole ‘I’ll wait for you/the war to be over’ once they both clocked how they felt for each other and couldn’t do anything about it.

So, instead I have more thots on how Anakin's handling the Kitsune transformation and some world building. tl:dr Anakin gets transformed by a Force Temple to reflect the strength of his force connection right before the events of AotC and this has a lot of run on consequences.

To the Jedi, Kitsune are considered beings of myth but there's a basis for them having actually existed once upon a time as extensions of the Force. Beings whose existence were so tightly woven within it that they were deemed embodiments or spirits of the Force itself, with Lightside and Darkside variants. So to have the highly debated Chosen One turned into this Fox Spirit? Yeah, it raises several eyebrows and quite a few Masters begin to panic because oh shit. This lends some credible weight to the argument of the Prophecy. While others are like, maybe the ‘missing father’ was actually just a Kitsune that’s been hiding in human form that the mother didn’t want to talk about.

They do not mention this to Anakin.

His genetics/biology no longer make the Healers want to cry because he’s not half-human and half-midichlorians anymore. The identification system just straight up returns with ??? on his species markers because it hasn’t got a clue. Kitsune markers were not in the system before. They are now.

They do mention this to Anakin. Along with what they suspect might be new food intolerances.

One of the first things Anakin notices about his new form is his enhanced sense of smell and hearing. Initially, very distracting as he tries to focus in the Force but he gets used to tuning it out like he did with his regular senses before. But, Ahsoka notices. Ahsoka who is a predator species and fully coming to terms with the fact that her new Master is also, basically, a predator species. Even if he’s the only one of his kind that they know of.

It takes a little bit of encouragement for Anakin to get the memo that his new Padawan wants to go hunting with him but once he realises he’s all for it. His full fox form with three tails is about the size of a Great Dane so he isn’t massive yet and doesn’t overshadow her during their hunt. It’s a nice little bonding experience for them. It comes at the cost of freaking out some shinies when they return with prey but free meat is free meat.

The next thing Snips and Skyguy work on is how Anakin can still wield his lightsaber while in full fox form. He doesn’t have opposable thumbs so he can’t hold it with his paws and his tails are not prehensile enough to swing it around either. The solution these two geniuses come up with?

Hold it in his mouth. Like this but with a lightsaber:

(Ninetails from Okami)

As you can imagine this causes some amount of concern from the other Jedi. Captain Rex also takes some convincing.

I've already talked about Anakin's issues with excess force energy but a funny mental image in this AU is to just have him run an obstacle course. Over and over like training drills to wear himself out. It's much easier with four legs. I feel like there must be species-specific enrichment rooms in the Jedi Temple, kind of like there is in Beastars, in order to settle oneself in their body. It’s not healthy to ignore what the body needs even if the Jedi are trained to not let it control them.

Once Anakin grows more tails he gets bigger (Shire Horse size at four, twice as tall as a clone at five) and realises that his full fox form is quite strong. This is both a blessing and a curse for him because he finds it cumbersome but also bigger is more intimidating. Then he starts working out its utility purposes, like hauling cargo, or carrying wounded/exhausted soldiers. Big crates can be moved using the Force but he can move more in one go with less focus just by physically shunting them around. Carrying people is basically like letting them lean on him in humanoid form or giving someone a piggyback so it doesn’t bother him as much as people expected.

Rex may or may not often situate himself on Anakin’s back when charging into battle because they’re both insane and it looks cool af. Bigger target to hit but he’s willing to take that risk because it means his men get hit less.

He gets annoyed with himself for being so self absorbed all this time, thinking his larger form was a hindrance rather than seeing how it could be useful, until Rex points out that he’s worked it out now so the self pity doesn’t really do anything for anyone. He’s good like that.

Rex: [grabs Anakin’s fox face in his hands] What are you? Anakin: [pouting] An idiot sandwich

Next thing he notices is that his tails fan out instinctively during his fights with Asajj, which completely blocks her view. Usually, he’s having to fight against his tails, trying to keep them from getting in the way rather than making them work for him. I’m thinking of that Kung Fu Panda fight with Shen the Peacock who uses his tail fan as a distraction/block during fights. Obviously it takes some time for Anakin to be that fluid with it and they discover in the process that singed fur smells awful.

Which brings us onto the downsides of the transformation. Namely, he’s now susceptible to ticks and mites that just love to latch onto furry tails if he goes through tall grasses or jungles during a campaign. He's already had to deal with flea jokes (mostly from Ahsoka) and now he actually has parasites on him.

Anakin: It would be a misuse of the Force to just kill them all at once wouldn’t it? Obi-Wan: Extremely. Anakin: [whinges] But doing it by hand is such a pain. Obi-Wan: Consider this a trial of patience then Anakin: You are so not my favourite person right now.

Standing in the rain is a lovely experience for him even after all these years but now that he has fur it comes with the caveat of smelling like a wet dog afterwards. The troopers do not thank him for that. Even less when he shakes to get all the water off, spraying the hangar.

A bit of world building I’m adding to this is that the Kitsune’s powers are expressed through their tails. The more tails a Kistune has the greater their connection to the Force/the more power they control, etc (same in Japanese Mythology, the more tails a fox spirit had the more powerful they were). Except, people worked out that the tails themselves hold power and if removed from a Kitsune that power can be harnessed to influence the Force for whatever purpose. Like elongating one’s life... (Gee I wonder who could do with that who is very close to Anakin -eyes emoji-). The tail disintegrates once all the power it once possessed has been used. A kitsune that has a tail cut off will never be able to regrow it as each tail is its own connection to the Force, which has now been severed. It is why the Kitsune disappeared from the known Galaxy.

I’m thinking Obi-Wan eventually discovers this because as soon as Anakin turned into one he immediately dove for the Archives with whatever spare time he had to learn whatever he could about what Anakin might have to face now. He does not like the implication that they were hunted into extinction, or at least hunted to the point of exile. Already he’s picturing his padawan getting hunted for sport. He does however make a TL:DR version for Anakin to skim through, looking like he hasn’t slept in five days and Anakin is very touched by this display of care.

Obi-Wan is just not a words of affection kind of guy.

[yellowocaballero]

Hi👋

I remember somewhere you said you’re very visual about your writing process which is why Jake’s stupid moustache had to go.

Does that mean you have fancasts?

:D ! Y'all ask me such great questions :D

The short answer to this question is 80% of the time no jalksdf. The fics I've been writing lately (comics, Moon Knight) are already a visual medium, so obviously I do just kind of use what the characters actually look like in the comic I most strongly identify with them or the TV show. In the end everything sorts out into a really generic mental animation style that's not really anything in particular. The longer answer is that I fucking WISH I did because my actual lifestyle gets so fucking messy. Like all of this actually severely really bothers me nonstop.

Because so much of what I write is multimedia I can't just play the OG work in my brain. Hey, do the other SW writers who think visually have the problem of like - so Obi-Wan in your mind is live action from ROTS, but Ahsoka is CGI from TCW, and Anakin is either live action ROTS or cartooney if he's younger than 19, and the clones are simultaneously live action Jango Fett and CGI clones and it makes it KINDA hard to visualize things? And the exact same issue when writing comic fics with a cast that is half live action and half cartooney in your brain? Like, am I the only one with this issue?!

It is so problematic for the new story bc of 3 different works with so many different art styles. Mr. Knives Trigun has a highly stylized 90s anime appearance that I don't think of him as, and a super realistic modern CGI appearance with which is how I think of the character, except none of that works for MY Knives, and obviously Millie is 90s anime, and Meryl is some sort of demented mix, Brad & Luida are 300% CGI, and Wolfwood is fucking impossible since he's from one hyper-super stylized woodcut-ass flashback of the CGI anime and AGH. Imagine new Knives Trigun as the 'I'm a healer but' meme guy because that's all I can fucking give you.

Again like this like 'Meg is this an actual problem you have when writing Star Wars, Comics, and Trigun' and the answer is that it's a BIG PROBLEM that BUGS ME. How the fuck do you guys live??? Is this just me?!?!

In brighter but equally uselessly complicated news, New Wave was more complicated since everybody was really specifically designed in my mind in a specific animation style and since I can't draw Y'all Will Never Know it. Obviously it was very 00s animation - you can really safely imagine Bruce as himself from the 00s Batman cartoon. I really liked how much sleeker and skinnier and younger he looks in that design! Steph has the BIG hair from her first Robin arc and Tim has Jake Animorph style Generic 90s Relatable Teen Boy visuals.

Sorry that's not a very fun answer and also not a very real answer :( Fancasts that I do genuinely have is, obviously, all for TMA:

Tim Stoker as a younger, sprucier, Daniel Dae Kim.

Daisy as Kristen Bell.

Elias as Marc Evan Jackson.

Annabelle Cane from Sucker's Bet is a mix of Jadah Marie and my friend from high school, which is unhelpful to you.

Teen Gerry was the kid from Monster Allergy. Yeah really.

Martin as That One Fanart My Friend Drew Of My Martin.

And. Obviously. Jon as That One Fanart My Friend Drew Of My Jon That Just Made Me Go Oh That's Jon Now OK.

(Think of Standard Fanart Basira and that's my Basira. Sasha, Georgie, and Melanie are just more generally designed by my brain.)

Do YOU want to design one of my characters permanently in my brain forever. Just draw nice fanart of them. It's that easy. I'll look at it and go 'oh this is what they look like' and that'll be what they look like in my head, forever, and ever. I promise it'll work.

[ayursesha123]

Ayurvedic Medicine for Women Health

There is a long history of using ayurvedic medicine to enhance general health and wellbeing. Originating in ancient India, its main goal is to harmonize the body's elements with the mind and intellect. This approach is also used to treat and cure a few chronic disorders that commonly afflict women. This method also treats and cures orders that frequently affect women.

Women's Health: An Ayurvedic Approach 

Every individual has a constitution (Prakriti) that encompasses their bodily and mental health, according to Ayurveda. The three primary doshas of Pitta, Kapha, and Dosha comprise Prakriti. For any kind of female health concern, Ayurveda is an excellent therapeutic option. 

Each month, overall health: A woman's monthly cycle is a reliable measure of her general health, according to Ayurveda. For optimal reproductive health, a regular and healthy menstrual cycle must be maintained. Shatavari and Ahsoka help women with irregular menstruation periods by regulating the flow. They also aid in irregular periods and uncomfortable menstruation.

Hormonal Balance: Hormonal fluctuations are common in women, which is concerning because they can cause irregular menstruation periods and other potentially fatal issues. They grow more common as the menopause progresses. A balanced hormonal system requires a healthy endocrine system. Ashwagandha and ashwagandha extract not only maintain hormonal balance but also lessen the severity of mood swings and heat flashes.

Stress and Pregnancy: Ayurvedic medicine suggests that expectant mothers should take better care of themselves by consuming a balanced diet and engaging in less physical activity. It's also a good idea to eat a range of specialist herbs throughout this time. It is recommended that moms partake in certain activities to rebuild and revitalize their energy after giving birth.

Digestion: Ayurveda holds that the foundation of a healthy body is a healthy digestive tract. For a healthy digestive system, foods like fennel seeds and ginger are advised. This also promotes good skin, strong immunity, and overall well being.

Conclusion

Ayurveda treats health holistically, and women can benefit greatly from many of its practical suggestions for maintaining bodies in a state of continual health. Adopting an Ayurvedic lifestyle will help you live longer and have a deeper, more personal relationship with your body. Ayurvedic Medicine for Women Health, which also starts them on the path to mental, bodily, and spiritual well-being.

[sirloozelite]

Prompt: Both Ahsoka and Kanan get couched on the same night. They decide to meet up for a few drinks (which turns into many drinks) and both return home drunk which gets them couched again.

Hey anon... here is the prompt all written out for you as promised. Hope you like it. I took your idea and expanded it a bit, as well as changed a few things around to fit an idea I’ve had for a while. Don’t worry though, it still keeps what you requested intact, just in a different way that I doubt you will be expecting. Hope it’s not too depressing. 

Enjoy

Oh, and I will be uploading this to my fanfic/archive account as well as a parting gift before I vanish for a bit, so yay for that. XD

Ahsoka and Kanan ‘Couched’ Prompt

“Oh come on Hera! It was just a small mission! Ahsoka needed my help!”

The only response Kanan got was the slamming of a door in his face, one that narrowly missed impacting his nose in the process. Kanan supposed that at least was lucky. Dealing with both a pissed off wife and a broken nose was not something he needed right now. 

Sighing to himself, Kanan turned on his heel and allowed the Force to guide him. He may not be able to see with his eyes anymore, but he still knew his way around places he was familiar with. The hallway leading from the spare bedroom in the Tano-Larte residence was no different. 

It had started out innocently enough. Both Kanan and Hera had decided to pay Ahsoka and Kaeden a visit for their monthly catch up. As the only other couple they really knew and enjoyed spending time with, it had become something of a tradition to visit the apartment in the middle of the fields of Alderaan’s moon. 

At first it had gone well. The four had caught up, traded stories, and even played a round of Sabacc with each other. Kaeden had somehow won, a feat that had astonished the two Force users in the room. 

And then that damn bird had arrived! Morai, Ahsoka called her. 

Kanan had nothing against the bird personally. In fact, he loved animals. 

Morai however had not been nice that day. Upon arrival she had dropped a small holorecorder onto the table in the middle of the seventh round of Sabacc, one with a recorded message from Maul.

That one message had opened up a can of worms for both Ahsoka and Kanan. Maul had proceeded to thank them both for their help in investigating a Sith Temple, and thwarting a Sith cult from rising again. 

Naturally, both Hera and Kaeden had been furious. They had demanded to know why they hadn’t been told about the mission and what it entailed. They had demanded to know why they hadn’t thought it wise to inform their partners of the possible dangers. 

And then, stupidly, Ahsoka had said that they didn’t want to worry them, and that it wasn’t really all that dangerous in the first place!

Kaeden had stormed out at that point, disappearing up stairs with a distraught Togruta pursuing her. 

Hera meanwhile had thrown her drink at Kanan, before retreating upstairs to the spare bedroom, but not before banishing him from the bed for the night. 

So now Kanan found himself heading back down the stairs alone, without any company for the night. 

Still, it could be worse. At least he’d have a semi decent place to sleep. 

Or so he thought. 

Upon entering the living room of Ahsoka’s apartment he sensed the presence of the Togruta herself, as well as heard her quiet mumbling to herself. The Force projected an image of the Togrutan woman, curled up on the couch, the very same couch he had intended to make his bed for the night. 

Realizing what had happened, Kanan sighed and spoke. 

“You too huh?”

“Yep.” Came the reply from Ahsoka, before she turned over and sat up, hands resting on her head. Her signature in the Force was one of deep distraught. Clearly Kaeden wasn’t happy with her if she too had been banished to the couch, and Ahsoka being Ahsoka, she was taking it very badly. 

Moving over to sit next to her, Kanan wrapped an arm around Ahsoka’s shoulders, offering what comfort he could. He knew this feeling well. 

“We should have told them, shouldn’t we?” 

“Probably, though if we had done they'd only insisted on coming along too, and we both know that’s exactly what we were trying to prevent.” Kanan replied to Ahsoka question, recalling their discussion before heading off on the mission in the first place. They hadn’t wanted Kaeden or Hera to worry about them as they so often did. It wasn’t like they were going alone after all. They had each other, and Maul, to watch their backs. 

Besides, Sith Temples were not the sort of place either Kanan or Ahsoka wanted their partners visiting. 

Still, it had resulted in both of them being banished to the couch, so now they would have to make the most of it. 

Patting the Togruta on the back, Kanan rose from beside her and moved over to a nearby cupboard in the kitchen, the Force guiding him all the way, painting the image before him as he moved. Upon reaching the cupboard he sought, Kanan opened the door, moving his hand inside to extract a tall bottle of wine that Kanan himself had gifted Ahsoka for her lifeday. Now seemed like a good time to open and share it.

Returning to the couch with wine bottle in one hand and two glasses in the other, Kanan sat back down beside Ahsoka, placing both glasses down on the table before the couch and pouring them a glass of wine each. 

“Thanks.” Came Ahsoka’s response as she reached forward and picked up her glass, downing the entire contents in one gulp. 

“Might want to slow down there buddy. You don’t exactly handle your drink well from what I remember.”  Kanan spoke, reaching a hand out to stop Ahsoka from pouring herself a second glass. 

“Why the kriff not. I can’t do anything right it seems. May as well just sit back and accept my fate. Not like anyone would miss me if I died of liver failure after all is it?”

Despite his lack of vision, Kanan’s eyes widened in surprise at Ahsoka’s words. Did the Togruta really think that no one cared for her? Had Kaeden banishing her to the couch had such a profound effect on her that she was contemplating drinking herself to death?!

Kanan knew from personal experience just how dangerous a mindset that was. He had once been nothing but a drunken outcast, grieving over the loss of his Master and the betrayal of the Clones he had called his friends. What Ahsoka was going through was different, but at the same time much the same. She had, in her mind, tried to protect Kaeden.

And Kaeden had responded harshly, kicking her out of her own bed. Ahsoka owned the apartment after all. If anyone should have left it should of been Kaeden. 

But she hadn’t left. Kaeden could have very well packed her bags. Instead, she had chosen to stay, albeit separate from her partner for the night, but she was still here.

“Perhaps I should have just stayed behind when the Death Star exploded. Everyone knows I’ve got darkness inside of me. Safer for you all if I hadn’t come back really. Or maybe I should have just let Vader kill me on Malachor.”

“Ok, that’s enough of that.” Kanan interrupted, keeping his voice steady, even with the heartbreak he was currently feeling. How could Ahsoka even think like that? It was only a small argument that had happened. Nothing worth contemplating one's own mortality. 

Oh perhaps there was something more. Ahsoka had always kept her cards close to her chest. She didn’t reveal anything she didn’t want or need to. If Kanan were to guess, Ahsoka had likely been carrying around some inner guilt or self hatred for years over what had happened. 

And now that she was at one of the lowest points he had ever seen her, it was all coming out. 

Kanan was just glad that he was the one to receive it. He understood better than anyone else what it meant to be lost. 

“Enough of what!” Ahsoka spat in reply, pushing aside Kanan’s hand and grabbing the bottle of wine again, pouring a second glass and consuming it equally as quick as the first one. 

“Thinking you’re not worth something Ahsoka. I know better than most what that feels like, and I sympathise with you I do. I could say many things about how you are being ridiculous or pathetic and a coward, but none of those would help, nor would any false pleasantries that people so often pass around about feeling sorry for you and understanding that you need some time. None of those help in my experience.”

“So what does Caleb!” Ahsok spat again, using Kanan’s previous name in an obvious attempt to anger him. It didn’t work. As far as he was concerned, Ahsoka was one of two people allowed to use that name in private. The other was naturally Hera, but the Twi’lek refused. 

“Well, slowing down on the wine would help first Ahsoka.” Kanan replied, taking a gentle sip of his own drink in the process before continuing. “All you need to know is that if for some reason someone decided to harm even a single metaphorical hair on your body, they would very quickly become public enemy number one with lots of people in this universe. Kaeden, Maul, Obi-Wan, Ezra, myself and Hera, hell, even Hondo would hunt down whoever so much as hurt you to the end of the galaxy, or even to the end of other galaxies and make them suffer, just as you would do for us.”

“And what if it’s not someone hurting me physically? How do you make a mental state suffer?” Ahsoka replied, her voice quieter now, bordering on tears. 

“I’ll admit that's one of the hardest fights out of all of them. Seriously they make facing Sidious seem like a simple levitation trick.”

Kanan’s response got a small chuckle out of the Togruta, for which Kanan was glad. Just that alone proved that Ahsoka was fighting against whatever mental stress she was suffering through. 

“In all seriousness though, all you can do is take it one day at a time. Every time you make it to the end of one day, you’ve beaten whatever mental stress you have. The more you do that, the less of a grasp it will have over you, no matter how many times it tries to come back in whatever form it pleases.”

Ahsoka nodded her head slowly, her signature in the Force calming from the rapturous storm it had been moments earlier, understanding settling in.

“So, you don’t think Kaeden’s gonna leave me?” Again, Ahsoka’s voice was timid and on the edge of tears. 

And once again, Kanan knew exactly how she felt. He too had wondered in the past if Hera would just abandon him after an argument. He had over time realized that she would never do such a thing, and if Kanan knew Kaeden well enough, he knew that she too would never leave Ahsoka. 

And if she did…

“She won’t leave you Ahsoka… and if for some selfish reason she did, then once again, we’d all hunt her down and make her pay. No one stabs our friend in the back and gets away with it.”

Kanan’s comment was meant to appear as a jest, something that again Ahsoka chuckled at, a grateful smile coming to her face. Despite that, Kanan knew full well that part of his comment was not a jest. If anyone ever dared hurt his hero… well…

Nothing would stop him from avenging her. 

“Thanks Kanan. I’ll try not to let it get me down anymore. I just…” Ahsoka began to speak again, her tone more stable this time, yet still shaky. 

“It’s hard, I know. You don’t need to explain yourself to me Ahsoka. Just know that I’m always up for a chat if need be.” Kanan interrupted, finishing Ahsoka’s word for her. She needn’t struggle anymore than she currently was. 

“Yeah.. ok. Thanks buddy.”

“Anytime buddy.”

*******************************

Hours passed by with both members of the ‘couched’ squad finding little to do but talk. Both of their minds were too occupied to sleep. 

The bottle of wine had slowly been consumed more through the night. Upon realizing how quickly she had drunk her first two glasses, Ahsoka had promptly slowed down, drinking her third one at a much slower pace. 

As it turned out, that third drink had been her last. Kanan had gone on the drink the rest of the wine by himself, bringing his total to five glasses, a feat that also led to the bottle being completely empty. 

In the end, both had dozed off, Ahsoka curled up on the couch as before, whilst Kanan took to the large armchair. It hadn’t been the most comfortable night of his life, but it could have been worse. 

Waking up to a slight headache from the alcohol, Kanan’s first thoughts were to the sounds of movement in the kitchen. Widening his already partially dulled senses, Kanan reached out with the Force to find Ahsoka, up and on the move, preparing what looked like a breakfast for the four of them. 

Rising from his chair, Kanan called out to Ahsoka. 

“Hey? You doing ok after last night? Hold your alcohol alright?”

“Yeah, surprisingly, just a minor headache. How about you?” Ahsoka responded, shooting him a smile that Kanan could see through the Force in the process. 

“Same here. Making something nice?”

“Yeah. Figured it’d be a nice apology for them both. I did drag you along on that mission after all.”

“Quit blaming yourself Ahsoka. I volunteered to help.”

“Maybe. But thanks again for last night.”

Sending a rush of support through the Force to Ahsoka, Kanan moved towards the table where the empty wine glasses and bottle still stood. 

However, upon reaching down to pick them up and move them to be washed, an aggravated voice echoed throughout the room. 

“Are you kidding me! We kick the two of you out for the night for a damn good reason, and you come down here and drink alcohol all night! I bet the two of you were laughing at us all kriffing night!”

“Kaeden I… it’s not…”

“No… it’s exactly how it looks Ahsoka! Don’t think your coming back to bed tonight! And don’t think making a breakfast is gonna make up for it either!”

The anger in Kaeden’s voice was shocking, so much so that even Hera, who had entered behind the human woman now had a complete look of surprise on her face. 

Hera’s reaction however, nor Kaeden’s anger were what Kanan was focusing on. Instead, all his attention was directed towards Ahsoka, and they way he felt her spirits shatter, instantly undoing all the repair he had helped her achieve the previous night. 

“Ahso….”

Kanan barely got two syllables into her name before a loud crash echoed throughout the apartment, the shattering of plates following it. 

Self hatred had overtaken the Togruta, resulting in her flipping all of the pots and pans she had prepared food with over onto the floor, several plates following them and breaking into many sharp pieces. It occurred to Kanan in that moment that Ahsoka was barefooted and surrounded by various sharp objects that would easily puncture skin. 

“Oh yeah, real mature Ahsoka. Just can’t accept the fact that your wrong.”

Kanan flinched at the harshness of the words that left Kaeden’s mouth, knowing in that moment it was the wrong thing to say to the Togruta who was suffering.

Ahsoka’s response was exactly what Kanan expected it would be. The Togruta huffed before moving across the kitchen, stepping on sharp fragments of broken plates in the process without a care in the world, likely slicing into the skin in the process. 

The Togruta stormed through the room, past Kaeden and Hera, ignoring both of them in the process, before heading out into the hallway and out of sight. 

The only indication of where Ahsoka had gone that Kanan got was the loud slam of the front door, followed by the slamming down of mental shields in his mind, blocking everything and everyone out. 

In that moment, anger roused within Kanan. He had told Ahsoka last night what he would do to anyone who messed with her. Kaeden was no exception. 

“What the hell is wrong with you!” Kanan boomed across the room, turning all her attention to Kaeden, who looked back at him with shock. 

“What?” Came Kaeden’s response, clearly not understanding why Kanan was so angry at her. She would regret that. 

“That! You know for a qualified Doctor you certainly suck at figuring some things out!”

“Excuse me!”

“Kanan?”

Kaeden’s own anger was directed at Kanan now, whilst Hera was watching with deep concern. 

But Kanan didn’t care. He would make Kaeden see just how wrong she was, and just how fragile Ahsoka currently was. 

“The sole reason we didn’t tell you about the mission was because we didn’t want to worry the two of you! However, instead of having faith in us, the pair of you reacted instead with anger rather than understanding! Hera I can understand, that’s the sort of relationship we have! But you Kaeden?! Are you even aware of the effect your reaction had on Ahsoka!!!”

“What are you saying Kanan?” Hera’s soft voice responded for Kaeden, the dark skinned woman currently stunned at the way the normally calm and serene blind Jedi was outright shouting at her. 

Pushing himself on, Kanan continued. 

“Your girlfriend is suffering Kaeden! She thinks that your gonna leave her over this! Hell I wouldn’t be surprised if that was always on her mind! That wine last night? You know what she told me! She said it would have been better if we had left her on the Death Star when it exploded. Or how she wished that Vader had killed her on Malachor! Ahsoka is afraid of her own self! She’s afraid to lose what she has! And by shouting at her and blaming her for trying to keep you safe all you have done if fulfill all of those dark thoughts that Ahsoka is currently having!”

Kaeden face fell in an instant, realization setting in to her. She understood now. 

But Kanan wasn’t done. 

“If you want to keep her by your side Kaeden you need to get out there and find her before it’s too late. Ahsoka was a Rebel Spymaster for years after all. She’s an expert at disappearing! Do you want that to happen?”

“No! I… kriff!”

“Kriff indeed! Let me make one thing clear for you Kaeden! Rex… Maul… hell even Leia… they’d all seek to punish you if you dared harm Ahsoka. But compared to them, anything I would do would be ten times worse. No one, and I mean no one, harms Ahsoka on my watch! Now… get out there and find your girlfriend before I think of something else to say!”

With that Kaeden nodded, turning and sprinting out of the doorway, her voice calling for Ahsoka in the distance. 

Taking a deep breath, Kanan calmed himself down, centring himself in the Force once more. 

“Are you ok?” Hera’s soft voice was quite the contrast to Kanan’s shouting only seconds before, and was a welcome sound to Kanan’s ears. 

“Yeah.. yeah I’m fine. Ahsoka just told me some things last night that reminded me of, well, me. I wanted to help her, so we pretty much just stayed up all night talking. The wine was just there as something to do. I thought I was getting through, but then Kaeden came down and…”

“And she upset Ahsoka without realizing what it was all about, I understand.”

“Do you think they’ll be ok?” Kanan asked, unsure for the first time in several hours. Around Ahsoka he had to be the strong one for now. 

Around Hera however Kanan could reveal his true feelings. He was worried for Ahsoka. She deserved to be happy. 

“They’ll be fine, especially now that Kaeden knows how Ahsoka is feeling.”

“Yeah… I hope so.” Kanan replied, moving over to the kitchen to begin picking up the various broken pieces of plate. 

A few moments passed by before Hera spoke again, this time her voice sounding slightly annoyed. 

“Hang on a minute! Is this the bottle of wine you got Ahsoka for her lifeday to share with us! You two drank it all by yourselves!”

“Um… yes?” 

“... you know your still banished to the couch for this right? Can’t believe you didn’t wait for me or Kaeden to have some too!”

Sighing to himself, a smirk coming to his face in the process, Kanan replied. 

“Yeah… I know.”

[comeandreadawhile]

Clone Social Media : Hobbies

The phenomenon starts with the intention to show the civilians of the Republic the men behind the armor, as well as an encouragement for the men to do the things they enjoy when they have the time to in lieu of sitting around cleaning weapons for a third time that day.

Scratch that—the phenomenon starts with High General Kenobi, on a rare day of leave, teaching his Marshal Commander how to bake. Said Commander’s men were happy to taste test the flurry of experimental confections that pervaded their leave days in the following months. News spread fast of Marshal Commander Cody having a knack for baking, and so followed the spread of troopers attempting to make their own treats and/or branching off into other things the civilians called “hobbies” whenever what they could get their hands on afforded them.

The phenomenon kicked off when Padawan Commander Tano began a social media account with the intention of using it as a public diary, her first post was a picture taken of some of the 501st—with permission, her caption says—as they went about retouching paint scuffed in their most recent battle. The men are relaxed, some with paint smeared on their hands and cheeks and seemingly reacting to some joke or story told outside the threshold of the camera, and it’s an almost startling difference from the image of rigid lines of men, faceless in their full kits of white plastoid, that the civilians are used to. Tano’s second post is a video clip of one Captain Rex, with one General Skywalker sitting on his back counting reps, doing push-ups; the video was captioned “Another day in the G.A.R., restless in hyperspace.”

The digital diary continues from there, videos and pictures of specific locations posted only after reaching a safe distance to do so, never sharing anything mission critical—past, current, or hypothetical future. Eventually she shows the men under her how to make their own accounts, and other Jedi and their own troops follow suit. The 212th then takes it upon themselves to post pictures of the little cakes their Marshal Commander has gotten so proficient at making, and, when General Kenobi creates a joint account titled “command_212”, convince Cody to post pictures of things he bakes before they are distributed—even in the process of baking, if the fancy strikes him.

So Marshal Commander Cody shares pictures of his experiments, of recipes he finds that turned out well, of recipes that didn’t because of some error or other that he’s determined to give another go, with the occasional cryptid picture of General Kenobi taking his tea in the barrack’s kitchen. As time goes on those pictures shift to Obi-Wan covered in flour, or a shot taken from several feet away of Cody sneaking batter captioned “caught red-handed in the red velvet”.

As Marshal Commander of the 212th has taken to baking to relieve stress, the Commander of the 104th has turned to needlecraft and yarnwork.

The 104th retaliate the populatrity of the 212th’s command account with the domesticity of their own, despite the vaguely threatening possibilities of knitting and sewing needles. Boost and Sinker run the majority of the account, although all OG members of the 104th have access to it; they post pictures of the things Wolffe makes them, of General Plo covered in the lengths of scarves he’s received, of Comet in the ever-growing swath the gifted blankets with the current tally in the caption (his toes were off the floor by blanket burrito 6). The holonet at large loves Plo almost as much as his men, and once a week they post him saying some piece of sage wisdom—or utter nonsense, as the mood strikes—as the war goes on. After months of asking for a face reveal and requests for the patterns people are sure Wolffe uses, they make the most Force-forsaken tutorial videos as an all-in-one series.

“HOLY **** HE’S CASTING ON 12 TO START—“ “WHAT A MAD MAN!”

“So when you get to this row here you’re going to knit 3, purl 3–“ “TRANSCENDENT!” “—yes, thank you, and then keep doing that until you reach the end of the row...”

“Oh, OH MAN HE’S GONNA DO IT!” “HE’S GONNA CHANGE COLORS!” “Holy **** man he’s gonNA YOOOOOOOOOO!”

Cody is then issued a challenge by the holonet to learn to knit. He learns to crochet. Because Obi-Wan knows how to crochet. The holonet loves video snippets of them progressing on projects together. They also love the videos Ahsoka posts of Cody attempting to teach Rex, and praise the absolutely completely unrelated hat she later posts a picture of; it covers her Montrals with enough room for a few years’ growth. Anakin gets yarn stuck in his mechanical hand because he forgot to put his glove on before attempting to craft.

The real throwdown happens when the account for the Coruscant Guard posts videos of Fox aggressively tatting while venting about the lack of funding for proper security and surveillance tech.

Each posts sees a comical increase in the surfaces covered in lace doilies and runners, as well as a new topic for Fox’s venting.

A picture of an pillow embroidered with “Kriff the Seppies” is briefly posted to the 104th’s account before being taken down and replaced with a censor bar. Rumors begin to circulate when Senator Chuchi posts a picture wearing a gifted lace shawl; Senator Amidala comments on her confusion being resolved as to why Riyo kept bringing little baskets of crochet thread with her before a senate meetings.

A competition for ship nose art starts up, many votes going to the 501st, and the holonet’s heart once again melting at “Plo’s Bros”. Personal art begins popping up soon after. Fives starts posting spray paint tutorials, Rex and Hardcase become popular for clean graphic art. Bly gets his hands on metallic paint and the crowds go wild. Kix has taken his clean haircut game to the next level.

And then Colt and Shaak Ti make an account to post art the Littles make, most of them representations of their older brothers with wishes of safety and good luck, and of the only Jedi they’ve ever known, sometimes creatures they studied in their preparation for worlds outside of Kamino. Of batches passing their final tests with a congratulatory post.

Suggestions and instructions are sent out for clones who want to take and sell commissions, allowing them to finally make some money; most Jedi are more than happy to help make sure the finished work mails out properly to the buyers.

Ships of the non-nose art kind surface on the holonet. It’s generally agreed upon that command_212 is run by husbands, and Aayla is the protector of the 327th and Bly’s heart, even if she’s a clumsy menace around his artwork (caf spilled over a drying watercolor can be interesting or terrible depending on the circumstance). No one can agree whether Skywalker is married to his captain or Senator Amidala, but everyone agrees that Ahsoka is their baby. The holonet declares Plo to have Big Dad Energy. Shaak Ti’s Big Mom Energy is a friendly rival. The Jedi council has made no official statement denying or denouncing these attachments.

Public interest begins to shift from producing more soldiers to making sure the ones the Republic has stay alive, when the realization hits that within a couple of years the children posting art and losing teeth would probably be losing blood and brothers on some far away planet. Of making sure the men are eating well instead of just surviving. Well certain account-holders don’t post for a while, grieving a loss, posting again to reassure their followers they’re alright, the public questions what’s being done to keep the men emotionally and mentally well outside of the hobbies the public knows them for. “Born to handle any stress” is very much the wrong answer.

Pressure is put on the Chancellor to let the Separatists sucede, no one quite sure anymore why allowing them to would be harmful when at worst new trade agreements would need to be brokered; if they want to leave so badly, let them. And let the men have their hobbies.

(Sad thoughts ahead)

Sometimes commissioners never receive their orders, simply a refund with a letter from that clone’s Jedi after the latest battle ends. Any money they’d made would be split however their closest brothers decide.

The channel that always posts pranks and spray paint tutorials makes a post saying they’d be away to look after their sick little brother. It’s the last post they make.

The Coruscant Guard’s account stops posting a few nights later.

After Order 66 goes out, a new account goes up posting any pictures and cute videos of Aayla. Reposting old ones that the public is sure they’d seen somewhere before, posting new ones of funny faces and ridiculous videos of silly dances. The last one is the only one captioned, “she wasn’t a traitor.”

The account is deleted the same night, and the one of the 327th’s adventures never posts again.

Wolfpack_104 does not post, but is still there.

Command_212 is deleted almost immediately the night of the order.

Years go by, almost sixteen, and only after Vader already knows she’s alive does Ahsoka post again. It’s a picture of her, and Rex and Wolffe onboard the Ghost in hyperspace captioned “Was never a traitor. Always the little sister even if I’m four years older. In case you’re wondering, Rex still draws and Wolffe still knits when we can nab the string and flimsi.”

[pumpkinparade]

Palpatine, Obi-wan, and tea

So, this is a very stupid idea, but I needed to get it out of my head before I did something extreme like writing fanfic. As a heads up, I've used real-world meanings for various details since there presumably isn't a Star Wars equivalent.

The story begins when Anakin is late for a social engagement. Both Palpatine and Obi-wan are anticipating his appearance. The Sith lord presents a kindly and patient front but fumes at this egregious waste of his time internally while the Jedi pushes his dissatisfaction into the force. He disapproves of the Chancellor, but his former padawan's discourtesy is off-putting. The fact that he has put the Chancellor of the Republic on hold merely aggravated the situation.

The Jedi informs the politician that Skywalker should arrive shortly. He doesn't. The chosen one is with Padmé at present and has forgotten he's meant to be elsewhere. Kenobi ultimately invites Palpatine to offers him some tea aboard his ship while they delay action until Anakin materializes.

Normally, Jedi eschew worldly possessions, but Kenobi owns an old miniature tea set that once belonged to Qui Gon. His tea supplies are generally supplied by colleagues who offer him the leaves when he's not on Coruscant. The ship is equipped with an electric tea kettle and a portable Hot Plate for cooking. He goes about preparing Green tea for both of them when he remembers the Sencha, while excellent in quality, has since gone somewhat stale. It hasn't gone bad, but it has lost some of its fresh flavours.

Jedi are practical(in theory), and tea can be costly.

Lower-income individuals in certain Asian countries have roasted stale green tea to enhance the taste. As this is an accepted practice, he takes the loose leaf tea in his possession, grounds, roasts, and serves it with minimal preamble. Palpatine debates whether or he'll actually drink peasant tea. When Anakin appears, apologizing profusely for the delay before noticing his ex-teacher has brewed tea and claims a cup for himself, supplementing copious amounts of sugar. On Skywalker's recommendation, the Sith decides to take a chance. It's not bad, so he compliments it. The evening wraps up without an event. http://mattchasblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/experiments-with-re-roasting-stale.html?m=1

Later on, the bureaucrat invites the Jedi to attend a senate afternoon tea party. It's an opulent affair. Flowering (Gyokuro) tea with Jasmine flowers bloomed within transparent glass teapots sat next to elegantly designed tiered trays. On hundreds of tables, they rested; the flat surfaces were loaded with the first, second, and third courses, from petite pastries on the top to the tiny tea sandwiches on the bottom, the aggregate sum had been skillfully prepared for the guests. Palpatine had the wherewithal to afford a party grand enough to unsettle a Jedi. To his delight, he had succeeded.

Nearly everyone in attendance had been bequeathed a box of 16 Jasmine Pearls green tea blooms, the dried bundled ball of tea leaves and flowers would open like a plant in "bloom" when placed in hot water.  

Kenobi had "accidentally" received 17,  an unlucky number. In Roman numerals, 17 is XVII. One anagram for XVII is VIXI. In Latin, vixi means "I have lived," the implication being that the person(Obi-wan) is now dead. Jasmine is a plant that symbolizes purity and takes its name from the Persian word "Yasmine". This term translates to "gift from God". Put together; your death is a gift from God(the Sith'ari). Darth Sidious finds himself deeply amusing.

Obi-wan is grateful for the tea, especially since he's recently finished off his supply and always felt sheepish defending the expenditure to the Council. Official regulation dictates that he's not permitted to keep the gift. However, Jedi can distribute the donations to others in the order or, better still, add it to the communal ownership and shared at the temple. There are enough in the box for all parties to experience the high-end tea, so he gladly donates it to the Jedi temple and appreciates it along with everyone else.  When Sidious hears what happened to his gift, he's pleased his secret message was brought to the rest of the Jedi as well.

Obi-Wan is averse to socializing with lawmakers in general and Palpatine in particular. Still, he makes a mental note to invite Chancellor to have tea with him again next time Anakin has them waiting for him as recognition for the expensive gift. Nevertheless, the opportunity doesn't come along until a few months later. Thankfully this time, the tea isn't stale. Unknown to Obi-wan, Anakin is in the middle of winning an illegal pod race. Skywalker wanted to purchase a present for Ahsoka, but as a Jedi, the lack of personal funds to his name meant he had to be creative if he wanted to show the people that meant the most to him how much he loved them, rules against attachments be damned.

This time he has Maghrebi mint tea. Traditionally the drink is sweetened, but he hasn't used sweetener. There is a bowl of rock sugar grown in the shape of tiny purple lightsabers on the counter. It was available if either party wanted to utilize the sweetener. The ingredients, as well as the tea, had come from Mace Windu.

Jedi were generally not meant to accept gifts from clients unless it's culturally necessary for them to do so. The tea was a regifted thank you gift from an ambassador. As the items couldn't be shared equally with everyone, Mace decided Obi-wan, as Anakin's minder had a more significant need for it.

After all the passive-aggressive messages he'd sent at the party, Sidious isn't expecting anything to receive any in return but still looks for any possible messages Obi-Wan might covertly send him through the tea anyway.

His actions don't seem to convey a particular message... unless Kenobi considered serving him a herbal tea that also happens to be an appetite suppressant is a message. Perhaps he intended to inform the wealthy politician that the Jedi felt Palpatine's tea party Palpatine had been too lavish and wanted him to know he'd offended the man utilitarian sensibilities, but that was likely a reach.

The tea itself was one of hospitality, meant to welcome guests by the male head of a family. As Kenobi poured the tea in three rounds as expected of tradition, he wondered if he had missed something and resolves to reflect on it more in the future. Each of the three rounds poured has a different meaning: life, love and death. The sugar represents the sweet aspects of life, and Sidious wonders as the sugar dissolves within his cup if the Jedi is aware of what he's saying about his life by going without it.

The Chancellor certainly knows the symbolism of prolonging the second cup to avoiding the third. Love as a concept was not something he neither wanted nor needed, but he had no fear of it. He drank to the idea without hesitance. If he played his cards right, Anakin's love would pave the way for the ascendancy of the Sith. As for death, he had designs on immortality. He would pass on even the metaphorical notion of his own demise.

When Anakin arrived, he doesn't go for any of the tea. He's tried the tea Mace had given his former master. It's tolerable, yet he has another target. Instead, he seizes the rock candy and laughs when Obi-wan protested that grinding on the purple sugar crystals might ruin his teeth. Nevertheless, he drops the bowl back on the counter after taking two and takes off with Palpatine.

Obi-wan is surprised the next day when the Chancellor has a package delivered that contains four(because four means death) kombucha starter kits(kombucha was considered to have "yang" energy in traditional Chinese medicine) and silver needle tea. As before, Obi-Wan gives the white tea to the temple, but he feels self-conscious. This incident marks the second time the Chancellor has given him something extravagant, and he feels like there are strings attached to the gift even if the politician hasn't said as much.

Politicians don't give gifts without reason—especially politicians who are not friends with the receiver.

Uncomfortable by the thought, he waited until one of his friends gifts him with tea.  It's Bant who visits him first—intending to give her friend Pu'er tea(flavoured with dried honey ginger chamomile) she'd received at a medical conference. Obi-wan explains the situation and asks if he can send the tea to the diplomat as a sign of gratitude. Bant isn't bothered by the question and wishes him success.

Little does he know that although he intended nothing untoward with his regift, Palpatine had, after considering the possible implications, managed to be offended by it. Pu'er tea was often used to treat hangovers(among other things). His former teacher, Darth Plagueis, had once kept several kilos of it in his home. The muun would consume premium Poo Poo Pu-Erh Tea the morning after he'd had a night of excess on Sullustan wine. After he'd given the Jedi kombucha, a very mildly alcoholic beverage, he'd apparently proceeded to criticize the gift by implying he (Sidious) was a drunk who needed it. Indicating he shared the same weakness that had gotten the deceased Sith Lord murdered was exasperating, even if Obi-wan couldn't have identified the reason.

And that's when the situation becomes, for lack of a better word,"serious". Obi-wan thinks they're exchanging gifts, almost they're friends, but he's becoming increasingly frustrated because they're uneasy allies at best. Still, he doesn't want to feel like he owes the Chancellor anything, so the cycle begins anew. His financial circumstances still haven't changed, so he's been forced to regift a few presents from his friends to have something to present to the politician who won't leave him alone.

Kenobi is frustrated by this. He already spoke of the issue with several of his friends. Usually an honest man, he felt compelled to share what might happen to tea they might give him. Always while out of Anakin's earshot. They're sympathetic but unsure what could be done about the man who holds so much power, especially considering the relationship his former padawan has developed with the politician. It's difficult to entirely avoid the man without avoiding Skywalker, who would notice any attempts at evasion and likely take umbrage, even if the Chancellor did not.

Palpatine, for his part, is honestly surprised to learn how very snide Obi-wan appears. He can sense the Jedi's frustration building and is aware it's related to the tea. That said, he hasn't guessed the actual cause. Instead, he believes Kenobi has managed to guess at the intent of his gift and is ostensibly reacting to the Chancellor's actual message.

Amused, he no longer sends veiled death threats. If he does it one time too many time, someone at the temple, likely Yoda, will start asking awkward questions he doesn't want to answer. Yet, he continues to send hidden messages with the intent of antagonizing the Jedi as he proceeds to misread the situation. As the other Force-user's better, Darth Sidious refuses to be out-performed in a game of pettiness by Obi-wan Kenobi.

Anakin assumes they're just two older men who love tea and have found a way to bond over that. He's pleased to finally witness two people he respects burying the hatchet and getting along. Ahsoka doesn't have the heart to tell him that Obi-wan is not happy with whatever madness he's been dropped into. Madame has resigned herself to remaining silent regarding her husband's bond with her former friend. She no longer trusts the Chancellor and knows bringing up her feelings with Skywalker will only end in arguments with the man she loves.

Matters take a turn for the weird when Obi-wan receives cacao maca tea from Quinlan Vos. His fellow Jedi had gotten it from a secret admirer with a crush. After tests came back proving it wasn't poisoned, he'd given the herbal tea to his tea-loving friend.

Like most of the gifts he'd received lately, obi-wan presents it Palpatine. He wouldn't have the ability to keep up with the bizarre back and forth otherwise. He doesn't have the money. He's thankful his friends understand how much he dislikes the idea of being beholden to Palpatine and encourage his efforts to circumvent it.

What he'd failed to account for was the reaction he'd spark by presenting a herbal tea that was viewed, by some, to be an aphrodisiac. Obi-wan himself hasn't realized he'd done anything problematic. Vos hadn't mentioned maca had a reputation because he hadn't known himself. When he'd dropped it off, he'd simply named the vitamins the healers had said it contained.

Palpatine is confused. He's politically powerful and comes from a wealthy family, so it's hardly the first time anyone has been interested in pursuing him. However! Just the other month, they'd been politely abusing one another. There hadn't been any reason for the change.  

Sidious can't decide Obi-wan attempting to insult his virility since maca is reported to help with reproductive health or if the Jedi is propositioning him. He hadn't thought Kenobi was interested in hate-based romantic overtures. That said, making mockeries of a sexual nature is astonishingly inappropriate given their positions. He wasn't offended, the possible slight was far too childish for him to take it sincerely, but he hadn't taken the General as the type of man who would make the insult in the first place. Complicating matters is the fact that the General is Anakin's former master.

He's hesitant to assume the situation would work out in his favour if the Jedi is twitterpated and if he should allow it... whatever it was, to persist. Would developing a relationship with Kenobi hasten Skywalker's fall to the dark side, or would the interaction convince the boy to turn his back on Darth Sidious.

Sexual relationships were irrational, messy little things and far more unpredictable than pretended friendship. He tended to avoid non-transactional sex due to the wildly unpredictable nature of the beast. If an uncompensated connection didn't service his ambition, didn't cultivate his power or influence, it was deemed irrelevant and discarded. An ill-defined situation occupied a troublesome grey area he despised, leaving him in something of a quandary on how to advance his agenda. Sidious knew he'd have to adopt a resolution expeditiously, and that inaction was as much a choice as any other.

[twilightofthe]

Anakin Skywalker Has ADHD.  Here’s Why:

I’ve noticed during my time as a neurodivergent person in the Star Wars community that Anakin, a favorite character of mine, displays a lot of neurodivergent traits.  Other people have noticed this too; in particular, @bpdanakins has made a really in depth and detailed post explaining how Anakin having BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) makes a whole lotta sense.  I’ve got ADHD, so this post is gonna be about how I as an ADHD individual see Anakin Skywalker as having ADHD too!!!

Note: Symptoms of ADHD include inability to focus and disorganization.  I have ADHD.  This post is gonna be a wee bit disorganized and I probs won’t be the best at citing a million sources cuz I do not have the mental focus to do that right now.  Thank ye.

So, what is ADHD? (Complicated.  The answer is complicated.) (If you don’t want the general ADHD lecture, just scroll down to where I start talking about Anakin particularly).

ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, is a neurological disorder that impairs the brain’s executive functions.  People with ADHD have trouble with impulse-control, focusing, and organization.  Basically, ADHD is a developmental weakness in how the brain manages itself.  I like to picture it like a filing cabinet.  Everyone else’s brain has a neatly sorted, labeled, and organized cabinet full of drawers that contain typical brain executive function commands.  ADHD people’s brains have a monkey in them that runs around screeching loudly, ripping labels off drawers, rearranging stuff, throwing the files everywhere, eating the papers and generally making a gigantic mess, so whatever you need to go to the drawers to look for something, it takes you ten times longer to find the mental command you need to do if it’s even still there-- and also the monkey is biting your leg the entire time.

People tend to say that this monkey infestation is a gift because sometimes, occasionally, the monkey will rearrange the papers in a different, special way that makes a beautiful picture that no one’s seen before and you can share it for the world to enjoy and everything’s great, you’re just quirky!  People tend to forget that it can be like that, but 90% of the time it’s more like the monkey has decided to take a massive shit all over the one specific paper you needed really badly and then put it in front of your foot so you step in it and don’t notice until people point out you’re tracking monkey shit paper everywhere.  Anyway.

ADHD is a complex condition and difficult to diagnose because it has so many different varying symptoms, and one person who has ADHD may experience none of the symptoms than another person who also has ADHD does and vice versa because there is a lot.  ADHD also tends to go unnoticed because it overlaps symptoms with a LOT of other mental illnesses an individual might have, so you might not even know you have ADHD if you’re also, say, autistic or bipolar, or again vice versa, because there’s a lot of “same hat” stuff going on there.  

ADHD also can have its own subcategories of mental illness that can also stand on their own, like ADHD-induced anxiety or ADHD-induced depression.  It can be really confusing to know everything going on in your head and put a label on it; for example for me, my doctors and I think I’ve got a separate anxiety disorder that works on its own that my ADHD makes worse, but that the depressive episodes I can suffer likely stem from my ADHD, and don’t need to be tackled individually or say that I have depression.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has previously identified three subtypes of ADHD:

Primarily Hyperactive-Impulsive type: Mainly have impulse control problems, tend to be impulsive, impatient, and interrupt others.  They fidget, hate sitting still/need to be in constant movement, tend to blurt out what’s on their mind or do what they feel like without thinking it through.  They’re constantly up with the thoughts in their head and have difficulty focusing on a single task unless they’re in hyperfocus mode (explaining more later)

Primarily Inattentive type:  Are easily distracted and forgetful.  Tend to be daydreamers who lose track of memories and personal items with regularity.

Primarily Combined type: Tend to display a mixture of both symptoms.  I was diagnosed as a child with the combined type but leaning more towards inattentive.

Anakin and Signs of ADHD:

SO.  For starters, I see Anakin as primarily combined type with heavy leanings toward hyperactive-impulsivity.  While this type is used to describe the stereotypical hyper little boy media tends to paint ADHD people as, adults can have it too and I see it a lot in Anakin.  ADHD magazine ADDitude gives examples of adults with h-i ADHD as people who find difficulty in waiting around for anything, interrupt others in conversation, make impulsive decisions, and have reckless driving skills.  Sound at all like someone we know?

Now Anakin absolutely checks all of the above boxes, but it’s way more than that, though.  I looked up Healthline’s basic signs and symptoms of Adult ADHD, and I am going to run down the list to show how basically all of them apply to Anakin Skywalker in one way or another.  Let’s begin!

Anakin and LACK OF FOCUS:  ADDitude suggests that saying ADHD people don’t have attention might be a bit misleading.  More accurately, ADHD people have tons of attention, we just can’t harness it in the right direction at the right time with any consistency.  In canon, it is made very clear to us very early on that Anakin has issues with some of the more spiritual aspects of Jedi training, like meditation, because he does not possess the focus necessary to concentrate.  We get other times when Anakin’s on missions with Obi Wan, where it is made clear Anakin has read the mission brief, but he hasn’t done a good job on it as he’s overlooked something.  He gets distracted while in diplomatic situations and Obi Wan needs to tell him to pay attention.  Palpatine is able to pull sketchy shit because he knows how to slip under Anakin’s radar while he’s not too focused on him.  Anakin isn’t always aware of his surroundings, seeing as how basically everyone who knows him knows about Padmé because he’s not good at being subtle; he’s not good at reading a room.  Canon has established that Anakin, while brilliant, has a very flighty attention span and unless it’s something that is deeply important to him or made glaringly obvious, his brain has a tendency to skip over it, and makes him less aware.

Anakin and HYPERFOCUS:  The flip side of ADHD focus issues.  While our brains don’t always want to pay attention to important rules or other peoples’ emotions or basically anything presented to us that we find boring in any shape or form, if we find something we like, we LATCH.  ON.  And we cannot stop concentrating on it, up until the point that we lose track of time and ignore others around us.  In canon, it is shown very easily what Anakin hyperfocuses on.  He’s described in several SW books and is shown in show and movies to completely go into a zone when in combat mode.  He’s good at it, he enjoys it, and saber skills is easily something that he can concentrate and get lost in.  Another obvious one is mechanics.  We see briefly in TCW and bits in the movies where when Anakin is fixing something or piloting something, he kind of drifts away from reality-- he’s got an ear on the situation if there’s danger of course, but he goes just solidly into Tech Mode where all he concentrates on is whatever he’s fixing/piloting at the moment, and that’s why he’s so skilled at what he does.  It’s also possible to hyperfocus on specific ideas or opinions, which you can see in basically every argument Anakin ever gets into with someone.  He’s like a dog with a bone on a topic he wants to discuss Right Now This Very Second and he will not let it go, nor will he allow you to either, because when we hyperfocus, our fixation can bleed into conversation until it takes control of the conversation, without us even knowing we’re doing it, so it can be surprising/embarrassing when someone points out we’re doing it. 

Anakin and DISORGANIZATION:  ADHD people basically struggle with organizational skills.  While we don’t see much of Anakin’s living spaces, we can see from the brief TCW snippets that his living quarters are a little cluttered.  However, he does run a relatively neat army-- though we don’t know how much of that has Rex, Ahsoka, Obi Wan, or someone else to thank for it.  In Anakin, most of the disorganization we see is in his mind.  Priorities can be an issue for ADHD people, and Anakin tends to prioritize the wrong thing at the wrong time at certain points.  He doesn’t always know what to say or how to say it, making him awkward and not very eloquent when speaking.

Anakin and TIME MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS: An issue that goes hand-in-hand with disorganization.  We have trouble using time effectively.  We procrastinate on things we don’t want to do, show up late, ignore things we consider boring, and the idea of the future or the past is overwhelming and or scary to us and can cause panic-- we need to focus on the now and the now alone because if we try to cross that bridge before we get to it, we might end up burning it.  All throughout TCW, we get Obi Wan in particular, but others as well, harping on Anakin for showing up late.  And, uh, he kinda does.  He makes it, he always does, but it’s always at the last minute just when everyone’s worried he’s not gonna show up.  He sometimes doesn’t go to important meetings.  He puts off paperwork.  Lots of people use all of this to make fun of him, be like “ah, he’s a bad Jedi, he’s lazy”, but like, that’s standard ADHD time management issues.  And fear of the future?  Hoo boy...  Anakin may handle his fears of the future in the literal worst way possible, but that overwhelming anxiety that everything’s rushing at you so fast and holy shit, you don’t have your shit together NOW, what the hell are you gonna do THEN, holy shit holy shit everyone’s gonna DIE PANIC PANIC DANGER PANIC--  Like, I get that.  I really do.  Fear of the future and inability to manage time overlap a lot.

Anakin and FORGETFULNESS:  ADHD have a tendency to forget important stuff, but here is where I remind y’all that not all ADHD people experience all the same symptoms, because Anakin actually has a really damn good memory.  Boy is sharp, he recalls really obscure stuff, and if you piss him off/do him a favor, he’s remembering that to his deathbed. Anakin, however, does display what is common in ADHD people, having a selective memory.  This goes hand in hand with our attention issues.  We remember what we focused on and that sticks in our mind: hopes, fears, interests, stuff like that.  Anything else?  Eh, if we didn’t notice it then, we’re not noticing it five years from then, or even five minutes from then.  That you can see in Anakin, where people like Ahsoka and Obi Wan have to teasingly remind him of important stuff that he tends to just shrug off like “oh yeah that thing that I didn’t care about then and don’t really care about now”, or he feels guilty cuz “oops I didn’t notice it then so now I’m lost”

Anakin and IMPULSIVITY: Aight y’all, this probably requires the least amount of explanation for Anakin Skywalker cuz the Star Wars narrative calls him impulsive like every ten seconds xD  ADHD people with impulsivity can be socially inappropriate (Anakin, always managing to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, king of escalating tense situations because he blurts out whatever he feels like), interrupt others (something Padmé and Ahsoka have both canonically called him on doing, he does it to plenty of others as well, Vader does it all the damn time by just force-choking people silent), rushing through tasks (”Oh Anakin, always on the move”.  He does not wait, he makes up plans as he goes, he’s constantly in motion), ACTING WITHOUT MUCH CONSIDERATION TO THE CONSEQUENCES (Examples: The entirety of Star Wars episodes 1-6, Star Wars: The Clone Wars)

Anakin and EMOTIONAL PROBLEMS: Alright, maybe THIS is the one that requires the least amount of explanation, haha.  ADHD peoples’ emotions seem constantly in flux.  We get bored easily and need constant entertainment. (Anakin running off doing crazy stuff seemingly for fun)  Small frustrations always feel like the end of the world because it takes over our entire brain. (Anakin being “overdramatic/overreacting”)  The slightest sense of rejection or negativity towards our ideas or anything we do can read as total hatred (this is called Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, it SUCKS) so we’re oversensitive about criticism of basically anything.  RSD also means we’re paranoid that we’re not noticing other people’s emotions, so we always tend to worry everyone else hates us or our friends are going to leave us-- we have serious abandonment issues. (Basically all of Anakin worrying about the Jedi’s image of him, worrying about Padmé and Obi Wan loving him, freaking out over Ahsoka leaving, etc.)  Our mind is focusing on a million things at once so our emotions run super quickly, causing what looks like mood swings because in the time it takes someone to get surprised, we’ve already gone through surprise, confusion, realization, betrayal, fury, and sadness and are now “randomly” crying in front of you (Anakin and his mood swings).  Focus issues make us not realize that something we’re doing is upsetting/bothering someone unless they flat out say it, so we may seem mean/inconsiderate/careless (ok, not excusing that part of Anakin’s personality is that he’s just kind of a dick lol, but other stuff that he does seems accidental; he doesn’t want to hurt anyone he loves).

Anakin and POOR SELF-IMAGE:  HOOOO BOY THIS IS GONNA BE FUN!  So adults with ADHD are often hypercritical of themselves, which can lead to a poor self-image.  I do this a lot, and I can’t really explain why, just that I am frustrated with myself and need validation from outside sources.  Anakin verbally expresses this to Padmé and Palpatine in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith especially with all his “I’m not the Jedi I’m supposed to be” bits, how he constantly puts pressure on himself in the novels to be “the very best, I have to be better than everyone, I SHOULD be”, the conflict with that Chosen One label and whether he believes it or not and the pressure he feels from others to fulfill it, to be the Hero With No Fear when he’s fucking terrified all the time.  He’s relentlessly hard on himself for his failures and is always looking for an insult in others’ words (Like if Obi Wan gives him gentle concrit, Anakin will subconsciously tear it apart to turn it into how Obi Wan has found an error with all of him and hates him and Anakin sucks). For all his pride in his abilities, Anakin really does not like himself, poor dear, and seeks outside validation in Padmé, Palpatine, and Obi Wan.

Anakin and LACK OF MOTIVATION: Also ties back to focus issues again, if we don’t like it, our brain won’t focus on it, and we can’t convince ourselves to do it.  We can see this in times where Anakin has to be gently (or not so gently) prodded by Obi Wan or Ahsoka or someone into doing some Jedi business Anakin considers annoying.

Anakin and RESTLESSNESS AND ANXIETY: It’s described as our “motor won’t shut off”.  We always need to keep moving and doing things, and we get frustrated when we can’t do something immediately.  There are also bodily tics with fidgeting or frequent hand movements.  We see this several times with Anakin during wartime, where he’s practically vibrating over having to play the long waiting game instead of rushing in and getting the job done immediately (See: on Naboo where Anakin is pacing a hole into the floor and Obi Wan is telling him to kindly chill pls).  Part of his issues in ROTS happen when he’s worked himself up into a frenzy over sitting not knowing what to do over what’s scaring him so he jumps the gun and goes with the first available (awful) option.  I don’t remember if this is Hayden or if this is me projecting, sorry, but I always feel that when I watch Hayden in the movies, he always portrays Anakin as vaguely squirmy/fidgety, not really ever sitting PERFECTLY still, like he’s always moving some body part, fiddling with something in his hands or on his clothes.  In TCW and the OT especially, we see how hand-wavey he is when he talks, especially when he’s pissed, then the Finger Wag Of Doom comes out, but his hands are ALWAYS in motion.

Anakin and FATIGUE: It’s as the word describes it, we feel tired.  All the craziness in our head is overwhelming and we just.  Feel.  Tired.  We don’t see this as clearly in Anakin because all the Jedi seem fatigued, they’re fighting a fucking hopeless war, but it’s definitely there.  He has sleeping problems with his dreams and nightmares that spawn from his anxiety that could easily be ADHD-induced; they’re there.

Anakin and HEALTH PROBLEMS: Long story short, it’s basically all your ADHD issues making you neglect to take care of yourself.  We see how Anakin has unhealthy coping mechanisms, neglects sleep, and throws himself into reckless, dangerous situations.  He does not take care of himself very well at all.

Anakin and RELATIONSHIP ISSUES:  Ruh roh...  Aight, so all of the symptoms above can very obviously prove to be hurdles in professional, romantic, or platonic situations.  We can see how all the above examples in Anakin have in one way or another caused an argument between himself and basically everyone he loves (Obi Wan, Padmé, Ahsoka), people he has to work with (the Jedi council, anyone he gets assigned to on a mission), and anyone else.  He’s not called a human disaster for no reason, his actions can make him rub people very much the wrong way, and being kind of lonely and awkward and with not many friends is unfortunately a common occurrence in the lives of ADHD people (It happened to me, and I would consider myself much more of a pleasant individual than Anakin (no offense, hon), other people who met me just thought I was “strange” and that was that).

WHEW.  So yes, all of the above state my reasons why I think Anakin Skywalker has ADHD (as well as anxiety, but that’s another post).  Please remember once more that these are MY EXPERIENCES AS AN INDIVIDUAL WITH ADHD and that once again, NOT ALL ADHD PEOPLE SHARE THE SAME EXPERIENCES/SYMPTOMS

I will give the two articles I bothered fact-checking with below, the one from Healthline and from ADDitude

If y’all wanna talk more about ADHD!Anakin or any other ADHD Star Wars characters or just neurodivergent Star Wars character headcanons with me, my inbox and DM’s are always open, I love talking about this!!!!!!!!!

[kittystargen3]

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13534569/1/Return-of-the-Survivors

Summary:  Alternate Universe- What if Anakin's mother survived and Anakin never went dark side. Padme has the twins on Tatooine and survives. Anakin tries to help the surviving Jedi, while still keeping his family secret. Meanwhile Darth Sidious has been crowned emperor and is going after the remaining Jedi. Rumors have it he's looking for a new apprentice. Anakin gets to be a daddy.

I’ve added chapter 43 to Return of the Survivors.  Below is a small selection, please click one of the links to read more.

Chapter 42 - Visitor

Bail Organa parked his personal freighter on the surface of Tatooine, about a mile from the coordinates Ahsoka gave him, when last they talked.  He pulled out a worn coat to wear over the simple garment that he used back home to blend in with the populace, and set off through the streets looking for what he hoped would be an old friend, at the very least.  Before he left, his wife had given him the old coat, suggesting that his worn down street clothes would not be enough to disguise him on Tatooine.  Now, walking around the place, Bail was starting to think his wife was right.  ‘ Alderaan and Tatooine are such different places.’

As he approached his destination, a brick building in the center of Anchorhead, Bail noticed a group of children playing outside.  The game they were playing, all the way out here on Tatooine, seemed very familiar to him.  He watched them for several minutes before he realized why the game was so familiar.  It originated on Naboo.  Smiling, Bail mentally kicked himself.  ‘Of course it’s from Naboo.  Padme runs this place.’   Bail took time to help a youngling score a goal before he headed inside.  

Behind the front desk a young red-head greeted him with a smile.  “Hello, can I help you.”

“Yes, I’d like to meet with Padme Amidala, please.”  Bail could’ve asked for the Jedi Council, but he knew how many bounties the Empire had issued for anything relating to the surviving Jedi, and he wasn’t sure how honest they were with the center’s employees.  Besides, he desperately wanted to talk to his old friend.  

“Oh.  Uh, do you have an appointment?  I don’t see one on the schedule.” she asked.

“No, my name is Bail Organa.  She’ll know who I am.” Bail answered her with a fond smile.

“Alright, Mr. Organa.  I’ll have her commed.  Did you want to sign up for classes?” she asked.

“No, accademia is not why I am here,” Bail said.

“Of course, you must be here for the new life skills class.” Bail started to shake his head no, when she continued, “No, don’t worry.  We’re very sensitive here.  I’ll just put your name down, and the boss can finish your entrance form when she gets here.”  He rolled his eyes slightly, then nodded.  It was the easiest response to give.  Arguing against her assumptions would take too much time, and he really wanted to see Padme.  The woman behind the desk typed a message into a comlink, then began to chat about something she’d heard from her sister’s, friend’s, cousin… He wasn’t really listening anymore at that point.  

As Bail waited, his eyes scanned the office.  On a wall there was an article printed out from a local news bulletin.  Padme and another founder were being interviewed on their organization.  Bail felt proud of Padme.  In the article her responses contained such well paced logic, and at the same time, were so full of passion.  It was definitely true to Padme’s style.  He was glad his friend could achieve so much.  He didn’t doubt her.

On another wall was a collection of holo-images.  Pictures of people holding certificates of achievement, or wearing different uniforms.  Bail was just starting to scan these photos when the door opened...

[irinapaleolog]

Star Wars Fans Use May the 4th to Send a Message to Lucasfilm: 'Do Better'

Twitter users are urging Disney to do right by its diverse Star Wars characters in the future.

It's May the 4th and Star Wars hashtags are all the rage on Twitter. Along with posts that celebrate the films or advertise the arrival of all nine Skywalker Saga titles on Disney+ is a more complicated topic: Star Wars' lingering problem with issues of representation. #DoBetterStarWars is trending, too, as story-minded and socially-conscious fans see the holiday as an opportunity to address Lucasfilm and Disney head-on about changes they'd like to see made between the last phase of Star Wars and the next.

A number of Twitter users are still rankled by how the Sequel Trilogy played out and are using the hashtag to complain of the supposedly shoddy planning that led to Episodes VII-IX feeling too disconnected. However, the majority want to speak to the franchise's treatment of women and people of color.

Star Wars has long found itself in a cultural and political limbo of sorts. George Lucas's own politics shaped the two trilogies he oversaw. Those films are widely thought to be reactionary to America's involvement in Vietnam and Iraq. The Original Trilogy made Leia Organa one of the most iconic female characters of all time. It granted her more agency and authority in the '70s and '80s than women in film often get now, but it also relegated her to a sex symbol in a space bikini.

Episodes IV-VI left something to be desired in terms of racial diversity. Things got worse in the Prequel Trilogy. Though Lucas added Mace Windu, finally giving fans a black Jedi, he also included problematic alien races like the Gungans and the Toydarians, who reeked of reductive stereotype. Episode I-III's thin characterizations of Padme and Shmi, as well as its few female characters otherwise, didn't help.

The Sequel Trilogy tried to course-correct with John Boyega's Finn and then Kelly Marie Tran's Rose Tico (as well as a more ethnically and gender diverse background cast). In the end, neither character fulfilled their initial promise. Many fans were underwhelmed with Finn's arc. There were implications he could have been Rey's love interest or even Poe's, not to mention strong hints that he was destined to become a Jedi himself. There was even the subtextual storyline that stormtroopers like Finn are apparently enslaved children trained as soldiers. All of this was left on the table and Finn did little more than become allegiant to the Rebellion and tag along.

More of #DoBetterStarWars's ire is reserved for Star Wars' treatment of poor Rose, the first woman of color to have a major role in a Star Wars film and the moral heart of The Last Jedi. Fans argue the team behind The Rise of Skywalker caved to pressure from toxic corners of the fandom and sidelined the altruistic mechanic, to the film's detriment. After internet harassment on a massive scale forced Tran off of social media, Rose had only 76 seconds of screen time in Episode IX and didn't factor into the plot.

Some commenters saw even deeper into the Rose erasure. "I'm sure it's only a coincidence that Rose Tico being a working class POC rising up against the tyranny of a fascist regime is the 'most hated' character in Star Wars," wrote ADarkly83.

Several fans tweeted about the misogyny they perceive not just from the films, but from the fandom at large. @cardiganvixen wrote, "There were women I believed in […] Leia. Ciena. Rey. Amilyn. Rose Tico. Star Wars started to feel like it had a place for me. It doesn't feel like that anymore."

Rey's power was another point of contention. Some predominantly male fans have been critical of Rey's strong connection to the Force and her early ability to use that power without what they consider to be proper training. Defenders of Rey take issue with how The Rise of Skywalker explains away her innate ability with her familial connection to Palpatine. Others lamented that there's still an unfair double standard, in general, when it comes to the galaxy's female heroes.

While plenty of Reylos use Twitter to express their regret that the new trilogy's two leads didn't get their happy-ever-after, a few are trying to raise awareness around the issue of Ben Solo's mental health. The character has become an inspiration to those who have suffered abuse and survived difficult circumstances. These fans see his death as a slap in the face, in which imperfect people are somehow more disposable and perhaps even undeserving of life after the point of their redemption.

By some measures, Star Wars is trying to do better. So far, The Mandalorian seems to be doing right by its characters, with new players like Cara Dune and Grand Moff Gideon sitting well with fans. That series will reportedly add a live-action Ahsoka Tano to its cast list in its second season, which has already been and will surely continue to be a widely discussed topic on Twitter.

With the Skywalker Saga complete, the future of Star Wars is uncertain, but one thing remains true: its devoted fan base is as diverse and opinionated as ever.

[fraternitae]

i’m gonna try and go into some of obi-wan’s mindset and why he is the way he is . . .  this will probably be a long post.  tw for suicidal ideation,  various mental health issues,  and a lot of discussion of trauma.

something that’s consistent with obi-wan kenobi is that he

a )  blames himself for the faults of others b )  is baffled or uncomfortable when people speak of him as important or valued

these are qualities intrinsic to who he is,  and they both stem from his difficult youth and history of repeated trauma.  as a child,  he was temperamental and headstrong,  and these qualities made him unwanted as a padawan.  he knew this.  at twelve he was staggeringly aware that if he couldn’t control his anger,  he was unwanted.  he was repeatedly rejected by qui-gon jinn,  and learned through that experience to temper and conceal his emotions,  as well as his need for approval and acceptance.  he constantly strived for perfection in everything,  becoming very rule - bound and harsh on himself as well as others in the process.

qui-gon eventually accepted him,  and even with a rocky start they became extremely close,  bonding into a father - son relationship.  through his apprenticeship,  obi-wan experienced several quite severe traumas. 

at 12 years old,  he was ready to sacrifice his life for qui-gon,  the man who had yet to accept him.  at 13,  he experienced another trauma in being attacked by firebeetles,  believing this too to be his own fault for being overconfident and losing focus.  at 17,  he witnessed a violent and sudden uprising, and thought qui-gon was giving up on him as an apprentice.  at 19,  he witnessed the torture and gruesome murder of tayvor mandirly.  

at 25,  he witnessed the death of his master after they got separated while battling a sith lord.  he believed qui-gon’s death to be his own fault,  that he hadn’t been fast enough to catch up to him,  nor strong enough to finish the battle quickly and save qui-gon.  he sat for several hours with the dead body of the only father he’d ever known in his lap,  knowing that his duty was now to train the chosen one.

he took on the task,  still believing that loss to be his own fault.  he felt enormously inadequate as a teacher.  the task of raising and teaching anakin skywalker was enormous,  daunting,  and difficult.  any fault of anakin’s he placed on himself,  to the point of this being seen as commonplace by the masters around him.  when anakin lost his arm at the hands of dooku,  he blamed himself.  when dozens of jedi died on geonosis,  he blamed himself. 

obi-wan kenobi suffers from an utter lack of self - worth.  he assumes everyone else sees him the way he sees himself.

during the clone wars,  his self - critical nature became less apparent as he hid his emotions deeper.  the republic needed a general,  so he became a brilliant general and ruthless warrior.   still he takes the most dangerous missions,  comes up with the most reckless tactics,  and each time something goes wrong he’s quick to blame himself and look for an answer. 

the clone wars took a heavy,  heavy toll on his mental health.  his lack of self - worth turned into a complete inability to see his own value,  even the value of his life.  he was alive solely because of his duty to the republic,  and because of anakin.  anakin needed him.  anakin cared about him,  loved him.  saw worth in him.  but even anakin had others.  ahsoka left,  and anakin was devastated.  obi-wan blamed himself for being unable to sway the council.  

at this point,  obi-wan is consistently passively suicidal.  he has no regard for the value of himself.  whenever someone even insinuates that he’s important,  he’s confused,  as if he doesn’t understand what other people see in him.  all he sees is his own failures and shortcomings,  as well as imagined ones he takes on because accepting his own helplessness when faced with the horror he experiences would ruin him completely. 

during his mission to wild space,  it becomes very clear to  ( among others )  bail organa that obi-wan is no stranger to harming himself.  he repeatedly refuses medical treatment and painkillers,  believing himself deserving of pain.  his favoured form of meditation involves pushing himself to the utter limits of physical endurance to focus.  when battling the sith holocron,  he actively seeks out pain to “clear his head”  -  something he doesn’t at all see as dysfunctional or negative.  it’s a fact of life to him.  

all this comes to a head when anakin falls.  when he sees the security recordings,  he explicitly expresses that he thinks he should have died on naboo.  he has no one left to live for,  nothing except the duty yoda gives him  -  a duty that very much keeps him alive,  in the end.  he asks yoda to send him after sidious because he knows sidious will kill him.  at that point in his life,  that is what he wants.  all his trauma,  his fighting,  his sacrifice,  ends with him in utter solitude,  with the only thing keeping him alive being luke skywalker.

obi-wan functions externally because his lack of self - worth is viewed by most others as the picture of jedi humility and humbleness.  in truth,  he’s distressed and exhausted and anxious most of the time,  pushing his own limits because absolute perfection is what he’s been trained to strive towards to even be wanted by others.

[demigodofhoolemere]

Saw The Rise of Skywalker last night. I went in totally expecting to hate it because that tends to be the way with my favorite franchises these days and I’d heard about how bad everyone seemed to think it is. No one is more surprised than me, but... I really liked it?? I do understand why others don’t, plenty of the content is pretty subjective in terms of the tastes of individuals. But I really didn’t have all of the problems I thought I was gonna have.

Plenty of spoilers below.

~~~

Negative:

- I can really only think of one huge negative which is just knowing behind the scenes info, assuming this redditor’s source is telling the truth (looks credible to me and we already know that things have been disastrous behind the scenes of the sequel films in general so I really have no trouble believing this): https://www.reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/comments/eisnd8/heres_what_ive_been_told_from_a_source_that/ . In which case my biggest problem is how severely Disney/Lucasfilm screwed JJ and the cast over and altered what they’d made. From the perspective of ‘this isn’t what we created anymore’, if I were among them I’d be ticked, too, and I am ticked on their behalves. I do want to see the un-altered, complete version that they did and even though I enjoyed the movie as is, I would probably enjoy that version even more because it sounds like important emotional stuff got shelved, and it didn’t deserve to be (Finn being force sensitive, dang it!). There were a couple of things that made less sense because of the way it got pared down (like the fact that Han’s appearance was apparently Leia manifesting him to Ben and that’s what sapped her strength so badly - that wasn’t made clear at all to me) and I’d love to see what it was like before it got messed with. But this knowledge is really my biggest problem. If I’d never seen this, I wouldn’t have anything truly bad to say about the released product.

Iffy:

- Re: Leia, without it being made totally clear what was happening, I thought they were repeating Padmé’s ‘lost the will to live’ send-off. It’s not something that particularly bothers me about RotS, Padmé did just have the stress of pushing two human beings out of her body all while living with the stress of her husband falling to the dark side and all of the Jedi are being murdered and the list of awfulness goes on, so even though she definitely has her kids to live for, I also know that she was undergoing unimaginable agony both physically and emotionally, and you CAN die from your body physically giving out and from broken heartstrings, so I don’t think that was stupid the way others seem to. But they needed to make what happened to Leia clearer, because I thought they were reusing that, and *that* I did think was weird, and kind of a cheap way to take her out of the picture. Not that Leia hasn’t been through hell enough for broken heartstrings, and losing her son on top of having lost her husband and brother could certainly do it, but because the movie didn’t give any further context for what was happening and what she was doing, it just looked like she passed out and then the next time we see her she’s covered with a sheet and I’m like, “Wait, that’s it?” So I do wish we’d gotten a little more in the way of explaining that sequence, so that Leia didn’t die from just passing out. That didn’t feel completely right to me. I much prefer the idea of her using up her strength to save her son.

- Leia dying at all. I get why, but... owie.

- Shortchanging Rose. I don’t feel terribly strongly about her but in any case it’s not fair to her and especially not to Kelly.

- Very convenient dagger rofl.

- The Palpatine stuff was very sudden. No prior hints anywhere. I don’t know if it’s something they decided late in the game, or if they were going to allude to it but felt TFA was too early and would have in TLJ if Rian hadn’t had such full control over doing whatever he wanted, but whatever the story there is, it felt very out of nowhere. We’re supposed to suddenly accept that Palpatine survived the fall down the shaft and has been living on life support in a cave making creepy clone Snokes. And like... it seems like the sort of crap he’d pull, so I can buy it and I’m not really too bothered, but wow. I can also get behind Rey being his granddaughter, I thought they dealt with that very well and I surprisingly enjoyed it, but again, it’s very sudden, and also because of the implications of that I have to live with the mental image of Palpatine getting it on with someone and for that alone I could have added another to the ‘negative’ list.

- So... Reylo. I constantly have mixed feelings about Reylo. I’ve very much enjoyed their force bond (one of the only things I did like in TLJ), I love the focus on redemption and good winning out, their dynamic is very interesting and I can see the allure of pairing them because of the balance of light and dark, they just have a fascinating thing going on. But I also can’t help but think about him having tortured her in TFA, and as much as I’m here for redemption and I love Rey’s heart I still think it’s weird how TLJ is like three days later at best yet she’s so ready to look past what he did to her, what he did to Han, and to plenty of other people, and those things still really aren’t acknowledged. We can have redemption without having amnesia lol, especially when those are the things he needs to redeem himself of. By all means, redeem him, I love a good redemption and I’ve found myself far more attached to his character than I would have ever expected, but don’t have Rey immediately ignore the past to do it, and... I don’t know how to feel about that kiss. Part of me liked it (especially his sweet genuine smile), but part of me still kind of goes, ‘Wait... no. Didn’t want this. Not like this.’ It’s not the affection that bothers me at all, but the fact that it’s romantic affection. I love the dynamic that’s been built between them but considering their history I’d prefer that they actually get some footing as proper friends (whether that be before anything else happens, or it just stays that way). Way too sudden for anything romantic. And really I just wish this trilogy hadn’t attempted any new romances at all, because I feel like things would be more meaningful if they were all left to be platonic friendships. There really wasn’t room for couplings in this trilogy and it sours things a bit for me that they tried to fit them in anyway. So tl;dr, I very much enjoy Rey and Ben as a dynamic but I’m more here for a platonic Reylo.

- I get the poignancy of having him use his life force to save her, I understand killing him off, but for ONCE can I have a redeemed character continue to live their new life and figure out how to navigate that? It also makes better sense to have characters like Ben try to pay for their past while they’re still, idk, alive and have the chance to do more. For once. Please. I’m not mad that they did this but I’m tired of redemption=death.

Positive:

- Pretty much everything else. I can’t believe how much I actually liked this movie.

- LANDO CALRISSIAN LANDO CALRISSIAN LANDO CALRISSIAN LANDO CALRISSIAN LANDO CALRISSIAN

- FORCE GHOSTS!!!!! ANAKIN. OBI-WAN. AHSOKA. ALL OF MY FAVORITE JEDI FOLKS. LIGHTS OF MY LIFE. I’VE BEEN WANTING TO SEE THEM THIS ENTIRE TRILOGY AND I FINALLY HAVE THEM EVEN IF THEY’RE JUST VOICES. NEW HAYDEN-AS-ANAKIN CONTENT. I’M OVER THE MOON. Ahsoka must be dead then but I’m overlooking this.

- Whatever the heck they did to use the deleted Carrie Fisher footage to give us more Leia in such a seamless way... hats off.

- Seeing the sequel trio actually all be together and working as a trio. I can finally feel like they’re actually a unit.

- That hug between the three of them at the end, my heart.

- I really do adore Rey. She has such a good heart. Seeing her fight against her ancestry and adamantly trying to be a force for good makes me happy, I love that she believes so strongly in redemption despite her anger, and I love that they still keep character details like her brilliance with mechanics and the way she’ll use scrap to slide down sand hills. I’m so proud of her progress with using the force. Rey is precious and I love her.

- Ugh I love Finn, too. He has a strong spirit and he’s come so far. I love that they delved (or tried to delve) into him being force sensitive as well, and that he has such belief in it now. It made me so happy to see other former Stormtroopers who couldn’t live that life and that Finn can have those people to relate to. Can’t say enough good things about Finn. Very proud of him.

- Interesting learning more of Poe’s past, and I enjoyed getting to watch him try to be a leader in Leia’s absence and feeling like a failure, since I felt he was the least developed of the trio up to this point so I’m happy I have more to go on. He felt a lot more fleshed out in this one and I really appreciated it. I’m glad to be able to say that I genuinely love all of the new trio now, because it used to be that I casually liked them but couldn’t connect. Although I connected to Poe’s love for BB-8 from the start and that’s still going strong. Only he and Anakin have ever truly understood my droid love.

- Always a sucker for redemption arcs. I never used to have many feelings about Ben one way or another, I didn’t feel there was anything in TFA to make me like or dislike him from the get-go because it was too soon to say, but TLJ (for all my issues with it) made me care more about what happened to him, and now this movie got me super invested. Did not see this coming. I’m glad I was able to like him and be emotional about his conflict and his ending.

- Already covered this but I really like Rey and Ben’s dynamic. I loved seeing them use their force bond to their advantage and work so well as a team. And I love that her healing his wound also healed his scar, symbolically healing him of Kylo Ren. GAH.

- Han!!! Just Han.

- CHEWBACCA GETTING A MEDAL. Both incredibly emotional because that’s probably Han’s medal and incredibly satisfying because darn right he deserves a medal! In your face, ceremony scene from A New Hope! Now give them to the droids and I’ll be appeased.

- Chewbacca just generally destroying me. His wailing hurt me even more than Leia’s passing itself did. Did not need that but also thank you. (Why am I such a masochist?)

- C3PO taking one last look at his friends 😭 I cannot tell you how relieved I was that R2 really did have his memory backups, because I was fully prepared to put “C3PO losing his memories!!! 😡” under the negative column. Thank goodness for droid friendship.

- Speaking of droids, new droid! D-O really had little purpose for being there but I’m a sucker for a new cute droid to love so I’m all for him. Bring on all of the new cute droids!

- Really liked that planet with the festival. So many cute baby creatures and I loved the subtle Easter egg of 42 years referencing the original release in 1977.

- Rey healing the snake thing! I’m all for NOT shooting or killing Star Wars creatures, there’s too much of it and it makes me sad (R.I.P. Rancor, so sorry Rancor handler. And I’ve never gotten over Ratts Tyrell and his crying family and I never will. Stop killing Star Wars creatures 2k20). Rey gets me.

- Liked the new characters. Zorri was interesting and Jannah made me emotional.

- With the context of Jannah having been meant to be Lando’s daughter, the scene she has with him in the end has even more to it than on the surface (not that either of them would know, but still), but I really do just appreciate Lando reaching out to a stranger to help her uncover her past and recover her life. Sweetheart.

- I loved that Hux was the spy, and not because he cares one wit about the rebellion but just because he really hates Ben. Talk about petty.

- The fact that Palpatine was behind every voice Ben has ever heard means that he manipulated him his whole life just like he manipulated Anakin and now I hate his guts all over again for the same darn thing. Incredibly satisfying to watch him shrivel away. Screw you Palpatine.

- LUKE AND LEIA FLASHBACK. LEIA TRAINING IN THE FORCE AND OWNING A LIGHTSABER. FINALLY.

- Briefly seeing other old characters like Nien Nunb and Wedge Antilles. That kind of thing just makes my day. Also pretty sure I saw Naboo ships in that enormous fleet and I know I’m never getting Padmé back in any shape or form so I’ll take it.

- Seeing Luke’s old home wrecked me. Seeing the binary sunset wrecked me. Luke and Leia’s force Ghosts wrecked me. Rey calling herself a Skywalker wrecked me. That ending wrecked me.

I think I covered most of it which leads me to my verdict:

I understand why this isn’t popular with everybody. A lot of it is completely dependent on personal taste. Luckily for me it actually was very largely to my taste, somehow, which I never would have seen coming because I’m usually so frustrated with recent things in the big franchises like this, and after TLJ I had no trust. But I was pleasantly surprised and actually pretty satisfied. They hit a lot of nostalgia buttons for me, made me care a lot more about the new characters, made me cry a ton, and generally delivered something I could be pleased with. Don’t know how it happened but I really liked this movie and no matter what people feel about it I don’t think it deserves the sheer vitriol it’s received (there’s criticism and then there’s yikes). I thought it was a pretty good movie and I’d watch it again willingly.

[nny11writes]

Declarations, Mental Health, and Other Things You Never Asked Me to Explain About Myself but I’m Gonna Anyways

Ok, it's been almost a year since my last update on this and I wanted to explain myself a bit? And also share my story a bit??? 

This is all personal stuff so no need to read if you can’t handle it right now or don’t want to handle it. You’re not obligated to, but I felt it was important to share all this.

Here’s hoping the “Keep Reading” link works!

cw: anxiety, depression, mental health, suicidal ideation, nightmares

SO. Last year I had been working in a hostile working environment under an abusive supervisor for 2 years. One of the things I had done a right before I got that job (and was unemployed, depressed, and heavily suicidal) was I picked up writing fanfiction again. I had been in about a two or three year dry spell where I was writing fanfiction but never posting. Just writing it for me. And then I'd unceremoniously dropped all after posting a Mass Effect fic that had great response/reviews. Because the pressure was too much for me.

I found SW: TCW while unemployed and desperately seeking something to help lift my spirits and distract me from my known but untreated mental health. I wanted VERY desperately to find something enjoyable in life again. I was literally only alive because I was afraid of where my cat would be placed when I died. I kept seeing interesting meta posts from MyLordShesaCactus and AlexKablob about someone called Barriss Offee and someone called Ahsoka Tano. Deciding that I had literally nothing to lose I gave the show a watch.

It was a lifeline. During a time where I regularly had nightmares of being a robot that was torn apart and decommissioned, or dreams where I'd barely nick myself and suddenly start bleeding out, SW TCW became an obsession. I was years too late to the fandom but I still found active people and love for this girl who was a little Too Much and a little Too Pushy and a little Too Scared to Fail. Ahsoka hits all my bingo slots for characters I project heavily onto. And soon enough my nightmares, while still consistent, were no longer a given. Sometimes I dreamed about star wars instead. The first time I had a dream where I WAS Ahsoka Tano I woke up and cried because I'd felt so good.

Then I got hired in what I thought was a life affirming and saving way, and instead was shoved into a different kind of hell. I became so depressed that first year that I self harmed by starving myself and denying myself sleep. Which, of course, makes it worse. I started writing "Twilight" as a way to cope with my increasing intrusive thoughts about suicide and physical self harm. Then it became a way to deal with intrusive thoughts about wanting to harm others. I needed an outlet and was denying that I need medication to manage my mental health.

I didn’t expect anyone to read it and like it. I thought people would hate it. Because it was awful because I’m awful, and therefore nothing I did could be good.

But people did like it. A lot.

Then I was escorted to Psychiatric Emergency Services because I wanted to kill myself on the job. The whole episode is a little weird in my mind, time warped a bit and I remember crying nonstop and being unable to stop shouting, but when I look back what I remember most is feeling completely calm. Calm and soft and light. I think that was due to me finally verbalizing my thoughts and seeing that others did care. That I wasn’t some worthless pest to them. When I got to PES enough time passed that I got my panic attack under control, and when a psychiatrist finally saw me I downplayed the whole incident out of fear I was going to be institutionalized. I was scared as fuck in my little temp room in my little plastic chair staring at my hospital band and desperately hoping that none of the other people there would talk to me. So when I saw professionals I lied. I got a doctor’s note to stay out of work for two days and went home.

I finally had to admit to myself that I was not doing well. I was not handling my anxiety or depression. I was not ok and that it was ok to not be ok.

I was still scared to get professional help.

Instead, I spent that November participating in NaNoWriMo, where I wrote what would later become the first several chapters of “The Apprenticeship”. The first installment to the Close But No Cigar AU. I decided that I wanted and needed to write something that was happier. Ahsoka Tano made me happy and I wanted to do something good, anything good (for once in my fucking life). And convinced that I’d never done a good thing and never could, I decided to do a good thing first for a fictional character. So in I went to a story where Ahsoka Tano was an anxious wreck of a person, but had support and help and love. Into a world where Anakin Skywalker got the sort of help he needed. A place where they could all still meet and be friends and be family. Not somewhere with no pain, but somewhere softer.

The next month I finally got a PCP, and at the ass crack of 2017 I finally got medicated again.

I had already posted the first chapter of The Apprenticeship and energized by the meds and the reviews I got hard to work on finishing that story.

Funny thing about medicine, it’s a hassle and often the first thing you take is a unique struggle that requires adjustment. My first medication seemed great! For about two weeks! Then I developed a hand tremor so serious I couldn’t feed myself. That night I seriously struggled to not drive my car into the oncoming traffic lane and avoided all bridges on my way home from work. What I took helped my depressive symptoms but made my anxiety worse. The hand tremor was also a serious and rare side effect. The next day I was off that medicine and on a new one along with gabapentin to help the tremors.

Writing was difficult as fuck with my fingers shaking and twitching on the keyboard but I needed it as much as my medicine.

The new stuff worked out much better for me, we tweaked the dosage and I’m still on it. I’m glad to be on it!

Let’s do a little time skip shall we? That summer, a year after my experience at PES, I started writing Declarations. I wanted to see more Ahsoka & Obi-Wan content. They seemed like two people who should be close friends, have more of a father-daughter relationship, and general be together more than they were on screen. I found the idea of two Temple raised Jedi, who seem to break a bit from the mold and thinking of the Order, exploring their feelings for one another to be fascinating. I quickly realized that it would work really well to show that they are both mentally ill as well. I don’t like the term “mental illness” but it is accurate so I use it.

So I seeded it in from the start. I wanted to have two good people with anxiety and depression and PTSD and who knows what else find each other and help each other out! I wanted Ahsoka and Obi-Wan to be happy damn it!

So I started writing the story I wanted to see.

And unwittingly did what I had already been doing, pouring my own personal self into the story.

I’m not saying that putting some of yourself into your writing is bad, it really isn’t! Writing can be an amazing tool to explore your own experiences and sort your own feelings. I had been using it for over a year at that point to help cope with my own awful experiences, many of which I was still having to live with and through.

What happened for me is that I put a little too much of myself into this story. At the same time I was doing that my supervisor had gotten even stranger and in some ways worse. I didn’t have daily dread of being fired but I still had daily dread over who I would find when I arrived. My supervisor came in two flavors: Angry and Blaming, or Sweet and Frivolous. I still can’t decide if she was really just that abusive or if she also could use a helping hand in the mental health department. I really can’t. She did abuse me verbally and emotionally at work, she did gaslight me, she did scare me. I’m not saying that she wasn’t an abuser at all but I just don’t know if she was that way because she needs help too.

I hope she gets help if she needs it. But I’ll be grateful if I never have to see her again in my life.

Back to Declarations.

I put too much in and it had great reviews and lots of love, and I got very nervous and defensive over it. Too defensive and nervous over it. I really want to shout out to White_Ithiliel again, because she really helped me make this fic A LOT BETTER. Like, A LOT. Y’all don’t even realize what she has saved you from!! In the process she also has had to deal with my wild anxiety issues and defensiveness.

Seriously, thank you for everything you’ve done for this fic and your endless patience with me!

The latest chapter I wrote in the spring of 2018, we started going back and forth with edits in the summer, and then I panicked over a good question and point she made. She wrote back and I very nervously peeked at her cropped response (the “show less” version) sometime around October 2018. My abusive supervisor had left but I had been asked to work with/under another lady who wasn’t not my supervisor. She was almost equally bad in another direction for me. My anxiety spiked and my depression got terrible again around the time we were working on this chapter. I saw literally half a sentence and read it weirdly, panicked, had a good cry, and closed the document.

I literally haven’t been in the head space to look at it since then.

My best friend moved in with me that fall, but he’d just had a suicide attempt a few month before. My own mental health, as I mentioned, was plummeting. This past winter my depression got out of hand. I stopped going to my band practices, I nearly stopped writing, I was exhausted. The only reason I didn’t go back to eating poorly and treating myself like shit was because he was there, and just having someone be physically there who I knew cared about me made a huge difference. If I had popcorn for dinner too often, he’d make us a frozen pizza. If I drank too much (and I abused alcohol this past winter for sure), he was there to help me with the hangover and violent sickness. Thank god for my best friend! My suicidal ideation went up but I didn’t become suicidal. This was the first winter in almost a decade where I haven’t wanted to seriously kill myself at some point. I had flashes of it, moments where the bottom of the world dropped out but they lasted for minutes or hours instead of weeks and months.

I talk to him a lot about my fics and fandoms, and he very patiently listens and helps me work through it all. He lets me read him what I’ve written or what I’m reading if I think it’s funny, and we talked a lot about this chapter of Declarations and my reaction to a sincere question regarding its content and characterizations. He offered to look at the chapter with me and see what my editor/beta’s response had actually been versus what I was afraid it was.

I turned him down in November for that because I realized I needed space and time away from this particular fic. This story where I made myself into Ahsoka and Obi-Wan and Anakin, which I could no longer separate the fictional world I had created from the emotions I was feeling about my “real life”.

White_Ithiliel, I am so SO sorry I never responded. I know my silence was probably anxiety inducing too. I want to say again that you didn’t do anything wrong or rude or mean to me. I just wasn’t mentally in a place to be doing what I was doing, and needed to turn myself off and on again.

Today, after having a full week of writing and nearly daily updating fics I enjoy I realized that my life has changed since winter.

I am at a new job with wonderful people that I really enjoy. It pays better so I’m also less stressed about money. My benefits finally kick in today and I plan on getting me a therapist soon along with a new PCP. I’m doing alright. I’m doing better than I have in years.

A huge part of that is thanks to having people PM me here on tumblr and being so genuinely enthusiastic about the stories that I write. So here’s to you all for helping me through my funk over the years, giving me ideas, and giving me a damn good laugh! dontcallmebugaboo

thirdbroomstick

woeful-woods

bobkitten

Gabby(Kirasoka)

And of course ithiliel-the-french-tolkiendil (AKA White_Ithiliel)

Y’all have been life savers, maybe even more so than I realized until I decided to write this whole crazy thing out!

Thanks to all of you, even those who just leave me a kudos or a like, I’ve been trucking along. Fandom has literally saved my life multiple times, and probably will again.

So today, feeling high on my new found writing powers, I finally went in and finished editing for the latest chapter of Declarations! Hell yeah me! :D

That said! I’m putting it on a formal hiatus!

I have the next chapter written (not edited) and several chapter ideas throw out on the page, but I also think I still need more time away from this story. I want to finish Declarations (y’all don’t understand how BADLY I WANT TO FINISH IT), but I also know that right now, where we are, we are literally on SEASON ONE, EPISODE 2.

Legit the next chapter takes place after the malevolence (AKA Episode 2 of season 1).

And we are currently over 32k in.

This is gonna be a long ass haul fic everybody. I didn’t expect it to be, I didn’t mean it to be, I wasn’t planning on it. I meant for it to be maybe 10 chapters and be super vague about the timeline.

But I think I’m just as much in love with this story as a lot of you are and dang it I want more! That means I have to write more, and that means I need to give myself space to actually be approaching it as a story.

And not as something I wish was happening in my life.

To anyone still reading, thank you, this thing was long than some of the stories I’ve written! But I wanted to share this. Yes, to explain why Declarations is currently in carbonite. But more importantly to talk about mental health.

Mental health fucking sucks my dudes. It’s hard and it’s messy and sometimes it comes out of nowhere and then leaves after eating your favorite snacks and cold clocking you at 3 AM.

I’ve been on a hell of a journey.

And a lot of you are too.

I’m not “tumblr famous” and I don’t think I’m any sort of well known fandom writer. But There’s enough of you out there that I wanted to post this in case you need to know that you’re not alone out there.

If any of you EVER need to talk, please shoot me a message! I’m legit down to talk about my fics, about your fics, about meta, theories, characters, what ifs, AU’s, etc. I’m ALSO legit down to talk about mental health and all the messy things that come with that. If you want to chat with someone about your fears, your ideation, your intrusive thoughts, HIT ME UP!

You’ve all been here for me, even though you didn’t know it.

I’d like to return that favor. So anytime, anyplace, please hit me up. I promise, nothing you’ve done is unacceptable or beyond the line. 

After all, in case you’d like a breakdown of the way I had a breakdown this last year, in the span of 10 hours I literally: 

Accidentally self inserted myself into a fic and didn’t realize it until asked about why characters were acting that way, got angry over someone not knowing what I didn’t even know especially when it wasn’t explicit, then immediately felt like the Worst Person ever for getting mad and anxious, went home and cried ugly sobs on my cat, debated if I deserved to live before immediately deciding that DUH OF COURSE I DO, but that I was just a sad sack and everyone knew it, ate one single can of vienna sausage directly out of the can for dinner, washed it down with waaaay too much box wine, cried again about fictional characters because I had “ruined” them, asked my best friend (drunkenly mind you) if I was a good person because I thought I was secretly the worst and a manipulator b/c I self inserted myself into my own fanfiction, and then spent the next 6 months or so anxiously opening and closing my google doc in fear of What I Might Learn About Myself or worse the discovery that I Had Been A Bad Person b/c I stated my thought process out clearly but obviously that’s just “mean” to do because I am a bad and can’t not do mean or something! 

Like...I get why I did it but fucks sake me. It took a lot of broken logic to get there. Looking back I don’t know how I did that actually. This is a self call out. I am @ing myself.

So, yeah.

Not sure how to end this. So...uh, feel free to talk to me if you want to!

[ambiguityisnoonesfriend]

May the 4th 2018 Letter

Dear Yoda,

I am so excited! I love all the iterations of the characters and relationships I’ve requested, and can’t wait to see what you’ve created for me!

My likes: toppy women and partners who are turned on by toppy women, humor, angst, endings with hope intact, functional relationships, dysfunctional relationships, secret relationships that aren’t really a secret, canon divergence AUs such as what if they got there five minutes sooner, time loops, porn, gen, fluff, friends with benefits, friends with benefits with feelings, interactions with the other characters who would be around at the same time except as specified, mixing and matching prompts (ex: Leia and Hera both having different troubles raising Force-sensitive kids and complaining to each other, or Ahsoka/Sabine go on a double date with Ezra/Luke, or something completely different)

My specific art likes: two or three panel simple line comics, playing card or tarot card type imagery, setting a scene, magic and metaphor

My specific porn likes: failsex including interrupted during or instead of sex, cunnilingus, both slash and het anal (DNW femslash anal), light bondage, sex pollen, aliens make them do it, the Force makes them do it, mental connections during sex, mental connections as a substitute for sex, using the Force during sex including light Force choking, Force ghost sex, toys

My line for enjoying sex pollen/AMTDI/TFMTDI is based on how much trauma the characters feel -- I prefer situations where they aren’t traumatized or upset and use the aliens/Force/pollen as an excuse for what they both/all wanted.

I do not want: noncon (okay with dubcon and sex pollen), scat, watersports, omegaverse, unrequested ships except as listed elsewhere in my sign-up, non-canon AUs such as coffeeshops, DJ, Holdo, Lux

Rey/Kylo: I went into TLJ expecting to get nothing for this pairing except maybe one dream sequence. I came out loving them even more. I love this pairing for all the potential. They are opposites. They are exactly the same. Each is incredibly jealous of the other. They keep being drawn together like two ends of a stretched spring, and the only question is if they’ll fuck, fight to the death, or both. My fondest hope is both. I love all variations of dubcon for these two, from The Force Made Them Do It and Sex Pollen, to Forced To Work Together For Reasons. Force bond sex also very welcome!

Finn/Rey/Kylo: I see Rey as drawn to both of them in a classic triangle: Finn is the pull of the light, and Kylo is the allure of the dark, and Rey is fascinated by both. Maybe Finn is enough to bring both the Jedi to the light. Maybe Kylo seduces them both to the other side. Finn and Kylo carry a lot of baggage with each other. Do they set it aside at Rey’s request, or does it define how they both must deal with her and one another? Kylo defecting and having to be babysat by Rey and Finn! Rey is injured and Kylo and Finn have to have magic Force Sex to save her! Aliens make the three of them do it!

Leia & Ben: The pain and the angst and the love in this broken family is the gift that keeps on tearing my heart out and I love it. I love every piece of heartache, how they got there, what each one thought the other thought. Given all possible futures, what would the final fallout be between Leia and Kylo after TLJ?

Poe & Ben & Jacen: At some point, these three were dragged along to some Rebellion reunion where their parents had fun reminiscing about the old days and the kids were bored. Nothing starts out well when the first words you exchange with someone are "My mother said I have to be nice to you." Knowing that Ben grew up to be a human disaster, and Poe wasn't not a disaster, and Jacen is named after a different human disaster, all I am saying is that something got set on fire by the end of the party, certainly by accident, possibly by the Force. This or any other misadventure the three kids got into would be a wonder and a delight.

Kanan/Hera & Chopper, Hera & Chopper: It's strongly implied that Chopper was Hera's only friend before Kanan came along, and from the finale, it looks like he's the one friend who will never leave her. How did they grow together? How long did it take her to fix him up after she found him, and what kinds of trouble did the two of them get into along the way? What happened when she brought aboard an alcoholic drifter who is suddenly competing with Chopper for her attention? What did Kanan make of a foul-mouthed astromech who may or may not have tried to kill him a few times?

Luke/Leia: I was ready for this ship to be sunk in the movie. I was not expecting to walk out shipping it even harder. I want all the happy times before the family reveal. I want all the angsty history post-ROTJ. Luke Denying his feelings. Leia denying hers. The times denying those feelings failed. Maybe Han knows. Maybe Han joins in. Maybe he doesn't know and that's part of the angst. Pre-TFA snuggling. Post-TLJ Force Ghost snuggling. It's all good.

Ezra/Luke: I love the idea of Ezra and Luke meeting up after the original trilogy and finding someone who understands what it's like to be them. They've both been through things nobody else would understand. Maybe Luke is the one who ends up finding Ezra out in the UR, or Ezra finds his own way back and runs into / is drawn to Luke.

Ahsoka/Sabine, Ahsoka & Sabine: Space lesbians on a quest! Everyone knows the point of a quest story is the journey and the discovery of the characters' own true inner selves, right? I want to know about all their adventures together! Does Ahsoka teach Sabine more badass lightsaber moves? Do they pretend to be married on one planet for reasons? Does Sabine build an awesome Machine that causes them unforseen plot problems? Do they date each other? Do they date other women while being happy for each other? I am okay with any combination of this, and I am happy to see them as a couple, or as dating any other female characters or OFCs except not Sabine/Ursa or Sabine/Hera.

Leia & Hera & Sabine: Capers for the Rebellion! This mission happened. I don’t know if it happened before or after the Battle of Yavin, or even several years after Endor, but it happened. Maybe they have to rescue other team members. Maybe they have to go woo new allies, or pick up supplies from a picky source. Leia and Hera are going to disagree about who is in charge. Sabine’s loyalty on the topic may vary depending on who is annoying her more at that moment. Leia and Sabine may wind up with their very first hangovers, or at a later setting, maybe they’re remembering same. For background pairings, I’d prefer Leia with Han, Luke, or both, and Hera with Kanan. Sabine is my little black femslash dress; I don’t ship her with Hera or Ursa but anyone else is fair game.

Hevy & 99: I rewatched the Domino Squad arc recently and was overcome with clone feelings. It seems like Hevy had talked to and confided in 99 before. Did he see his brother as a mentor? 99 clearly held great affection for all the clones who passed through his life. In the microcosm of his friendship with Hevy, how did he see himself? You can bring in the other clones to the story, but I'd like the primary focus to be on these two. You could take this in a more romantic direction if you like, or keep it platonic and focus on the friendship they built.

Hera/Rex: I could see them forming a FWB arrangement sometime by Hoth. Hera doesn't want to get feelings involved ever again because she doesn't want another broken heart. That doesn't mean she won't get feelings anyway but they're not in her plan. Rex has admired her for years but there are chain of command issues, which could be why he's on the Endor strike team and not directly under her command circa RotJ. They both can have angst because of the dead guy in the room, real ghost or imagined. She can have angst out of wonder if this is the best thing for her heart or her child. He can have angst because he doesn't do relationships and his time is getting shorter by the minute and should he accept this little bit of happy? Maybe they end it after one time. Maybe they knock on each other's door every several months even after the war.

Rex & Luke: The moment Rex figures out who Luke is, he is going to be Luke's number one fountain of information on Anakin Skywalker. How do they both react? Luke kept the Vader thing secret for Leia's sake, but did he ever tell Rex?

Hera & Jacen: My one DNW with this relationship is no character death for either, otherwise I am here with the fluffiest of fluffy kid fics to the most heart-wrenching of angst. Hera playing with the new baby and feeling her heart lighten! Jacen's first flying lesson! Maybe he has the Force, maybe he doesn't, maybe he really does but Hera convinces Sabine and Zeb to lie with her and say he doesn't. Does she spend every day worrying at the going rate for the Black Sun's bounty on any known Force sensitive child? Does she tell him the Good Parts stories about the Ghost family in their heyday, and is he the one she was talking to in the trailer voice over? Does she have to keep his legion of uncles and aunts from spoiling him? Does she take him into space battles with her aboard the ship, knowing they could be blasted into dust? How does the conversation go with Cham when she tells him he's going to be a grandfather? Did he ever attend Jedi Death School and how did the two of them react when they found it how it ended?

Hera/Kanan: All of it and everything. Their first months working together. Missing scenes from the time of the show. That time they banged in Ezra's old comm tower while everyone else was busy during "Flight of the Defender." Those times they banged in the various rooms of the ship. Kanan figuring out this Force Ghost business after the fact the way Qui-Gon did, and hanging out to watch and guide. Were Zeb and Sabine their first attempt at building a crew, or were there others around before, and what happened? He's been smitten with her since the beginning, and she didn't say she loved him until the end, so how did they work around feelings, and not admitting to those feelings despite the fact that everyone around them knew? What was he about to tell her when Rukh attacked? Fix-its! Post-canon angst! Comedy capers where they're just hanging out having fun!

[smokeybrandreviews]

The Force is Weak

The Star Wars Experience at Disneyland has grossly under performed. Merchandise sales is at an all time low. The Last Jedi and Solo were both bombs. Rise of Skywalker is getting all kinds of side eye from the community. It’s wild to see this happening because i love Star Wars almost as much as i love Marvel. Skywalker and friends was a sure thing. How the f*ck did Disney f*ck it up? If you listen to Iger and Kennedy, it’s an combination of toxic male masculinity and Star Wars fatigue. While that is true, it’s not the major problem with this franchise. I’ve poke on this before but it’s been several years and i have a much larger cross section to judge. In my humble opinion as a fan of the   franchise since the 80s and a life long lover of geek culture, i wanted to dive back into this train wreck in a galaxy far away.

Problem: Kathleen Kennedy

Kennedy is the biggest problem Star Wars has encountered in a long time. She is the one-eyed, drunk, captain of this capsizing ship and she keeps throwing people overboard instead of actually patching the many, many, leaks that will follow. She’s the intern that was around that got Lucas his coffee for decades and came along in her position as a grandfathered in stipulation for the overall sale. Kennedy is not a creative. Kennedy does not know the lore. In fact, she has gone out of her way to declare her disdain for it. The decades of creative position outside of the initial 2 trilogies and Clone Wars simple doesn’t count, even though there are fan favorites and intriguing stories told in that now ambiguous mire. Kennedy seems to want to erase what Star Wars was and elevate what it’s going to be; What she is in charge of. It feels like she wants to be seen as equal to Lucas and that’s never going to happen.

Fix: Move Kennedy to a strictly executive position.

Get her out of the day-today. Effectively banish her to oblivion and install someone to take up that Kevin Feige roll. Maybe the cat that is in charge of Star Wars TV, Dave Filoni. You need someone who knows the lore and has a respect for it. Kennedy is neither of those things. That chip on her shoulder from years of being dismissed by the creatives at Lucasfilm has her literally dismantling everything the fans love because she hates it. I understand she has a contract but the fact that she gave Ryan Johnson a trilogy worth of Disney bucks after the way Last Jedi went, is very telling of where her head is. Basically Kathleen Kennedy needs to be removed from her responsibilities of the Day-to-Day of the Star Wars machine. She is the biggest problem. Literally everything wrong with this franchise begins and ends with her.

Problem: Rey

I don’t have a huge problem with Rey but i understand why everyone else does. Rey is mad OP for no other reason that “female empowerment” which is ludicrous because one of the strongest females ever set to film in Leia, is literally IN the same movie where Rey is introduced! How do you f*ck up the evolution of the next generation so hard when the blueprint is wlking around the set with you? Gender politics aside, i’ll get to that in a minute, Rey is more a prop that a character. We don’t know anything about her. At all. She’s super good at everything she attempts with no explanation. Like, a few throwaway lines here and there would fix the narrative laziness about her easily. “How can you fly this ship so well?” “I’ve been on Jakku my entire life. I’ve had time to study.” This exchange makes the fact Rey can fly the Falcon plausible. “How do you fight so well?” “i can kind of feel the flow of battle. I told you i can take care of myself.” This establishes Rey has a sense for battle that can’t be explained, ie. The force. Of course, this doesn’t explain how she bested Kylo or embarrassed Luke with a stick but it plants seeds for the real fix.

Fix: Rey HAS to be a Skywalker.

Not a Solo. Not a clone. Luke’s kid, specifically. Anything less will go down like glass with the fans. I think that’s where JJ was going when he wrote the treatment for these films. Objectively, that’s where it had to go. Star Wars is a Skywalker story. You can do so much with that line. Hell, the Expanded universe, f*cking Legends now i guess, did a wonderful job with all of it. Rey needs to be the child that Luke had in secret. Maybe those junkers stole her. Maybe he gave her away to keep her safe. In order to save that character, Rey NEEDS to be a Skywalker. This would only elevate her in the mythos, not belittle her accomplishments. But, again, Rey is a Kennedy creation. She can’t be linked to Skywalker in anyway because she’s hers and not his. This mentality is a mistake and it’s crippling one of the most compelling aspects of this brand new take on the franchise.

Problem: Gender Politics

Oh, this can of worms is about to get all over the place. So i get what Kennedy wanted to do. Star Wars is an inherently masculine story. It’s a story of fathers and sons. A patriarchy is strangling freedoms under threat of planetary destruction with the biggest phallus replacement in the history of cinema, until Awakens gave it some viagra for their climax. Throwing in a little estrogen would go a long way to level of this testosterone party. That makes sense and, like i stated above, Rey has potential. The community isn’t against female warriors. Look at Ahsoka. Ma started on a rocky introduction. By the time Clone Wars ended, she was held in the same air as Vader, Luke, Leia, and Solo. Ahsoka is literally my second favorite character in all of the mythos, after Vader. And that’s not counting any of the ancillary characters. Bastila Shan and Mira Jade immediately come to mind. Hell, Chelli Aphra has become one of my favorite characters! What these cats all have in common is the fact that they are well written characters with earned strength. None of these women are mary-sues who come across as more of a OC self insert than a proper Star Wars protagonist. None of these characters are plot derailing distractions with no substance or agency other than to save Finn, robbing him of his moment because “muh love.” Rose Tico. I’m talking about Rose Tico. Why is Rose Tico?

Fix: Tone that sh*t down.

It’s fine to have gender politics in these movies. They are political animals. It’s that the execution is scathing which, in turn, is alienating the community. “The force is female”? Really? Did that even need to be said, let alone printed on a shirt and paraded about while offending long time fans with your dismissal of their very valid concerns? There were, of course, asshole in that chorus. Hell, they might have been the loudest. But just because i have a critique about your movie, doesn’t make me sexist or chauvinist. It means that there are very real issues with character and narrative development that needs to be addressed. It means that, if i can see these flaws, they are very visible. That means a lot of people are seeing the same things i am because they are there. I don’t hate women. I don’t hate the female-led direction of this new trilogy. I hate bad stories and these, so far, are bad stories. Stop using your feminism as a shield to legitimate critique and fix the goddamn movies!

Problem: Direction

These cats, on the sword of Kennedy, have gone through a lot of directors, man. of these first movies, a little over half have had a director change in the middle of production. Hell, Solo had their directors changed because Kennedy fired them over that Droid, L3-37. Apparently, that was a caricature of Kennedy, herself. The directors, the cats who made Lego Movie and Spider-Verse, thought it was funny. Kennedy didn't so she fired them, even though their movie was 3/4 finished.Rogue One suffered a similar fate but that was more Kennedy hated the film and it was managed poorly so Tony Gilroy “directed reshoots” but it’s widely known he shot just under the amount that would give him a director credit. And then there’s the directors promised movies, who lost them before they even started production. Trank, i’m looking at you.

Fix: Vet your visionaries better.

I don’t understand why this is a such a problem for Star Wars when Disney owns the blueprint for this sh*t in Marvel Studios. Feige hires cats you wouldn’t expect and let’s them create to their strengths.The Russos have given us the strongest films in the MCU and Winter Soldier is, in my opinion, their Dark Knight. Taika Waititi literally saved the entirety pf the Thor franchise and is positioned to be the first in MCU history to get a fourth installment. Edgar Wright was tapped for Ant-Man but in a rare misstep by Feige, walked away. Instead, they hired Peyton Reed but had enough respect for what Wright brought to the table, that they used his screenplay and gave him credit for it. Kennedy has extended no such courtesies. It’s like she doesn’t make movies with any respect for the material but makes the movies she’s always wanted to make but couldn’t. It’s like a bunch of sporadic ideas that are all over the place. You can’t make a coherent, interconnected, cinematic universe by throwing sh*t at the wall and seeing what will stick. hat’s what the DCEU did and we’ve seen how that has fared.