#anakin has cptsd

[cptsd-skywalker]

After reading through your blog, I have to conclude that you think that patients with CPTSD are all ticking time bombs who are always going to be violent and abusive and cannot ever change themselves for the better. And since you have CPTSD yourself, that means you think you will never be able to improve yourself, and the people in your life who have to live with you should just get used to how you are because you’re not changing. And that sounds very lonely to me; I too have CPTSD, but ever since I started to take an active role in my own healing instead of blaming everyone around me for my condition, I’ve been much happier. I hope someday you can reach the same conclusion.

This is a very cruel ask. I almost just deleted it without answering. However I think explaining myself might be worth something.

Mental health healing is not a linear journey and one must have resources to do this. I am assuming by “taking an active role” in healing you mean going to therapy and taking medication, both of which I am doing currently. Neither you or I are going to wake up tomorrow being “totally healed” you’re being mislead by your care team if you genuinely believe there is a cure for ptsd. You can be treated and it can be managed with the right resources, but it doesn’t just “go away” one day. It’s like to you mental health is an Olympics game to win and losers are just that, worthless losers. Honestly shocked that someone who claims to be so far along in the healing process would pass this kind of judgment.

For the record, if you had bothered to really read any of my posts you would know that I do not condone any of Anakin’s crimes towards others. An explanation is not an outright excuse. Understanding why he did something doesn’t mean you think what he did was the right thing to do. Furthermore, there are more factors in peoples choices in the world than just morality. People do not make their choices in a vacuum. Referring to your comment that all survivors must be “ticking time bombs” to me, I would like to add that under the right set of circumstances just about anyone can find their humanity tested to its limits. That doesn’t mean there is no right or wrong or that the choices we make don’t matter. After all, I’d Anakin choosing to overthrow the emperor matters than his choice to hunt jedi also matters. It’s not a one to one correlation. Diagnosing Anakin with CPTSD or BPD doesn’t sweep anything under the rug so much as it acknowledges contributing factors to the whole.

Also for the record, I don’t like your undertones of “people should just live with how you are” becuase you seem to be implying that I’m an abusive person when you don’t even know me. Again the judgement is very strong here. I honestly don’t think you read any of my posts in a meaningful or thoughtful way. Just because I don’t think of Anakin as you do or through the lenses that you do doesn’t mean that I am automatically going to champion abuse in real life. That’s just ridiculous.

Anyway? I hope you don’t hardline against people in the future without any backup. If you want to take issue with something specific I’ve said then please let’s have a real discussion with sources. I have many posts deep diving into why I believe Anakin fits the criteria for CPTSD. The morality of his actions is a totally separate thing.

[sameteeth]

one of the pieces of anakin's fall that everyone always misses is his use of the clones. anakin skywalker, who at 9 wanted to become a jedi. who was so haunted by guilt that he left his mother a slave. who violated the jedi code because he couldnt bear to spend another night not knowing his mother was safe. that anakin. that anakin was ok leading the clones to war. the clones who were made for this, made to work and toil and die without end, so the natborns could live peacefully.

i think if anakin wasnt reeling from the death of his mother and hadnt started slipping to the dark side already he wouldn't have agreed with the use of the clones. i think he would see himself in them - forever scorned, subhuman for the circumstances of their birth, desperately trying to rise above the fact that everyone they've ever met only has an interest in leashing them. so anakin being a general and agreeing to lead the clones is much more sinister than it seems at first blush.

the jedi order agreeing to lead the clones is its own egregious violation of the jedi code. theyre peacekeepers, not generals. they fight individually or in pairs, not in coordinated attacks (see geonosis). everything about them is not meant for violence, but for protection. but for the jedi to lead the clones to be anakin - it's even worse. the jedi know slavery is bad, but they do not expend resources trying to end it - for political reasons ofc, they themselves are at the whims of the republic - but anakin has Lived it. he is more like the clones than any other jedi, which makes his leading them all the more painful and heartwrenching and sick

[anidala-for-ever]

I know you’re a big Anidala shipper but what do you think of the criticism that Anakin has a Madonna complex regarding Padme. Curiously, that argument actually came from a pro Anakin/jedi critical account, @cptsd-skywalker. I know a lot of Freud’s research and studies have been called into question but it is an interesting criticism of Anakin and Padme’s romance.

I'm not entirely sure of what a Madonna complex is. I believe Anakin did idealize Padme to an extent, because of the circumstances of their meeting and because she later represented a way for him to have a family again. But, I also think he also engaged with her in a human level and gave her space to be herself, as Padme. That's part of the reason Padme fell in love with him

[bcitisthelight]

Do you have any more thoughts about Janet I’m obsessed with her conceptually

I do have thoughts about Janet. I think Janet is tiny (under 5 feet) and looks exactly like Edna Mode. I think she's actually a child psychologist who specializes in childhood victims of systemic violence like slavery or war and the conditions they develop because of that formative exposure to toxic stress (Think CPTSD, OCD, Bipolar, developmental disorders - all the things that have been found to be associated with that). @husborth and I have talked so long about Anakin's mental health - or rather, the lack of it - but in specific we talk about the relation between his PTSD and his Bipolar disorder, which we headcanon him to have. I think Janet is super good with this, but I also think that - because even the psychology field discriminates against people with bipolar, and often psychiatrists will flat out refuse to see bipolar patients - Padme is kind of desperate by the time she gets to Janet. Anakin in mustard gas and roses has been imprisoned, cooked, and basically had his whole world melted down. He's doing....poorly. I bet Janet was her last shot. I think Janet practices a combo of talk therapy and maybe EMDR. There's a lot of emotional identification, and maybe even - play therapy, which, can you imagine this tiny woman being like well i guess it won't make him any worse, so they go for this little session where Anakin like, plays a little with these little puzzle games while he talks about things. I can tell you what I think she isnt, which is that I think she doesn't practice any form of CBT - which is imo a terrible methodology but especially so for mental health issues from systemic abuse, and those who have suffered trauma. I also think she is exacting about professionalism - Anakin goes to her for years, and he knows four things about her 1) Her name is Janet 2) She's older than him 3) She was born on Naboo 4) She likes chocolate biscuits. I think because of his fawn response to validation, and his extremely fucked up ideas about authority, she kind of has to really enforce this boundary, or else he could get really unhealthily obsessed with being Correct and Impressing her, which, idk if you've ever done therapy, but that's the exact mentality that will destroy a functioning relationship with a healthcare provider, particularly a mental services provider. Oh, I also think that since Padme has infinite money and probably does house calls multiple times a week, she probably pays for her mortgage with the retainer fee she charges Padme

[caripr94]

I posted 316 times in 2022

13 posts created (4%)

303 posts reblogged (96%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@gch1995

@fanfic-lover-girl

@archer-bro

@tragicfantasy-girl

@lakeside-conservative

I tagged 311 of my posts in 2022

Only 2% of my posts had no tags

#politics - 141 posts

#science - 139 posts

#leftism - 124 posts

#sjw - 122 posts

#star wars - 87 posts

#anakin skywalker - 66 posts

#pro life - 63 posts

#abortion - 57 posts

#christianity - 56 posts

#profanity - 45 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#it doesn’t mean she deserved what happened to her at the end of rots but padme was still a very flawed character in her naïveté and elitism

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

@fanfic-lover-girl

Yeah, that coward OP blocked me for criticizing their precious Bail Organa on their post, so I'm going to have to say it here:

I disagree with there being necessarily nothing wrong with taking advantage of an opportunity. It is wrong when that opportunity comes from someone else's misfortune and you take advantage of that misfortune instead of helping to alleviate it as much as possible. That baby girl's family was being torn apart and instead of helping to keep it together, Bail took advantage of the opportunity for a child to claim as his own and scavenged her from them. That's quite covetous, callous, and cruel, and that's the problem with so many adoptive parents, which is why the adoption system is so corrupt. As for not considering all the factors, Bail Organa was an experienced politician in the middle of a crisis who held the fate of an entire planet in his hands. He should have considered all of those risks to his nation and his family before making such a stupid decision. Like you said, that makes him a bad leader that he was willing to endanger his planet like that.

But you're right about everything else, though.

@tragicfantasy-girl

@praetor-canis

@gch1995

@wingletblackbird

@redrikki

@rogue205

@allronix

@cptsd-skywalker

@the-chosen-anakin

@leias-left-hair-bun-again

@riana-one

@skyguy8108

@thatonecrazyfan

@avayarising

@alyraa-undomiel

@creativesplat

@kit-kat-of-midgard

@stuckylokanefan

@mynameisanakin

19 notes - Posted June 12, 2022

#4

Hello! I've been thinking about adoption after your post and wanted to follow up. What's your ideal adoption system? I know some parents want free babies to prevent possible interference from biological parents down the road. Even though babies may form bonds with their mother, won't they just eventually forget anyway? I can hardly remember anything before 5 years old.

That kind of adoptive parents you're talking about are half the problem with the adoption system. It's because of them that it's a corrupt industry that makes millions of dollars off of exploiting and manipulating vulnerable women, much like the abortion industry. They're spoiled, entitled, covetous vultures who want womb-wet babies to replace the ones they can't have while ignoring the fact that God gave them to someone else first. Preventing interference from biological parents should be the last thing on their minds, but it's often the first thing that they consider, even though it's rarely ever what the children need. Those babies may consciously forget their moms, but I don't think that their subconscious minds ever forget. The trauma that separation from their moms causes is so profound that it has significant psychological and even physical effects that can last a lifetime. And then there's still the inherited genetics that determine their brain structure and chemistry, which lays the foundations for a child's temperament, preventing them from bonding with their adoptive parents like they ever could with their biological parents. Even adoptees with loving adoptive parents always know that there's something missing, even if they don't always acknowledge it and it takes them decades to do so.

I already mentioned in the comments on that post that kinship care and legal guardianship are better alternatives if the parents can't or won't care for the kids no matter how hard you try to convince them or support them. Adoption should be a last resort if an option at all, and even then, it shouldn't be closed or lasting.

26 notes - Posted May 26, 2022

#3

@steambabyweek was supposed to kick off yesterday, but it didn't. It probably doesn't have enough traction right now, but that needs to change.

34 notes - Posted May 17, 2022

#2

You know that your interpretation of a ship is bad when you have to ignore the significant character and relationship development in the narrative (especially in later parts) that makes the ship work. You also know you're misinterpreting it when you're comparing it to characters and ships that have nothing in common with it.

38 notes - Posted September 7, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

A message from a Zutarian

Kataang shippers and other Zutara antis, you might have Bryke and their canon, but we now have the other writers and their broadcast drafts of the scripts. There's now no valid reason to call us delusional for reading Zutara into the A:TLA narrative any more than Kataang. So I suggest you take a good look at these before proceeding to do so or telling us that the buildup was never part of the canon.

55 notes - Posted October 14, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[bioxmedic]

✨ About Ophelia ✨

Nicknames: Li, Lia.

Ophelia grew up on Naboo, living with her mother. Her father was nowhere to be seen and she had no siblings. During the Clone Wars, she found herself working with the 501st, having been saved by them during an attack by the separatists. She has medical training and became a battle medic of sorts for them before being transferred to Clone Force 99 due to her being one of the most skilled medics out there. They had 100%, she gave 100%, it seemed to just make sense at the time to everybody. She was the only female among the clones but was regarded as one of them for keeping them alive.

Ophelia lived in a small village on Naboo, coinciding with Gungans but mostly living among humans. She began her training at a young age, following the foot steps of her late mother who was killed by separatists. She was recognized by Senator Amidala when she witnessed the young medic helping out Jar Jar Binks and had gained the senator’s support throughout her training. Her ties to the senator as well as the 501st also allowed her to work alongside the Jedi at times, although she would keep her distance as she was wary from the beginning. After a while, Obi Wan, Anakin, and Ahsoka seemed to be the only 3 she could truly trust.

When Order 66 was executed, Ophelia was with Clone force 99. She was very devastated by what had happened and didn’t speak for several days, eventually starting to come out of her state of shock to realize they still had work to do. She would also be lying if she tried to say Echo didn’t have anything to do with pulling her out of it. When she found out he was alive, she immediately embraced him and started crying. She’s got a tough exterior but is definitely very soft hearted, especially when it comes to the clones.

✨ BLOG RULES ✨

NSFW: I don’t mind it, but I’m wary because this is definitely a 20+ thing for me with age. We can roleplay all the SFW content, but I’m gonna be a little strict about NSFW.

Don’t be a jerk. This one is pretty simple.

Asks and inbox are open to all, please don’t abuse it 💚

I’m bisexual and so is Ophelia. She’s very careful with her personal relationships so unless we discuss something beforehand, you’re gonna have to work up to a relationship like that. Even if you rp a clone.

✨ Things I will not RP ✨

Rape/non-con: Absolutely not. It’s not even a plot point for anything in my mind. Ophelia has a blaster and she knows how to use it.

Too much violence or gore: I’m talking like…overly descriptive, horribly disturbing, why are you writing this are you okay kind of levels of this. It’s war, there will be this but there’s hardly any blood in Star Wars and I’d like to keep it as clean as we can.

I will be adding TW/CW to certain things. I use Ophelia to kind of deal with my CPTSD and depression at times and if that’s not for you, that’s okay. I don’t have to incorporate it. Don’t be afraid to tell me you don’t feel comfortable with the theme or don’t want to write it. It won’t hurt my feelings at all and we can do our best to skip over or rewrite things 💚 I’m pretty chill to get along with.

If you have any questions, don’t be afraid to ask!

[septembersghost]

@someoneoffthestreet Becky, you made a post that said Dean wasn’t Han Solo, he was actually Obi-Wan, which is a galaxy-brained and correct take, but I was considering how often, particularly in the early seasons, Sam was more of an Anakin than a Luke, and it occurred to me - 

the black-hole brained take, Dean was also Padmé

[gch1995]

Is it just me or is what obi wan did to anakin on mustafar something what sidious what do, even though sidious is way worse than obi wan (although obi wan has flaws even though he is one of my favorite Star Wars characters) still palpatine loves to torture people especially in the comics instead of going for the quick kill like Vader even if obi wan didn’t mean to purposefully do it he basically tortured anakin letting him burn like that, should’ve just captured/killed anakin

That scene on Mustafar where Obi-Wan uses Padme as bait to try to lure him into a trap to kill without her consent, eggs on Anakin into a fight, even when he tries to say he doesn’t want to fight him before, cuts off Anakin’s limbs, and then leaves him to burn to a crisp, while self-righteously lecturing him about failing, were absolutely exceedingly aggressive, brutal, deceitful, and manipulative methods that are supposed to be more typical of Sith than Jedi.

Obi-Wan’s a very cut-throat ambitious, hypocritical, manipulative, self-serving, and vain bastard. He’s definitely that colleague and toxic friend who would only ever have your back if it wasn’t an inconvenience to them, somehow eased their own guilt and/or made them feel better about themselves, only to immediately turn around and stab you in the back when the boss offered them a promotion to do it, or the cool kids offered them a spot in their clique for it.

“Oh, I loved my master Qui Gonn so much that I’ll try to honor his dying wish by taking on Anakin as a padawan against the Council’s wishes, but I’m also going to spit on that Master’s grave by deliberately disregarding his advice and teachings of being more independent and open-minded as a Jedi by instead being the exceedingly avoidant, close-minded, and ass-kissing Jedi™️ that Yoda and the Council expect me to be instead because Qui Gonn being more curious, independent, and open-minded never got him Yoda’s and the Council’s approval or a seat on the Council as a master. Kissing Yoda’s ass and blindly towing the party line of their cult from here on out, though, will get me Yoda’s and the Council’s approval, and a seat on their Council, even if it means dishonoring my deceased master’s approach to teaching by throwing Anakin, Ahsoka, Padme, and everyone else I care about under the bus every time doing so gives me a chance to earn Yoda’s and the Council’s recognition.”

“Anakin, revenge is not the Jedi way, but it’s perfectly okay for me to egg on enemies and opponents in to duels every time by being exceedingly aggressive and defensive in combat, even if they back off, hesitate, freeze, or surrender first. Revenge is not the Jedi way, but it’s perfectly okay for me to chop off your limbs and leave you to burn alive in agony, while self-righteously lecturing you about failing from ‘the high ground’. “

“Also, after Yoda and I found out about your survival on Mustafar, we spent the next 19 or so years plotting and then attempting to use one of your offspring to kill off the monster of a man we helped influence you to become in the first place because we’re too cowardly to deal with you ourselves.”

You also notice how Obi-Wan and Yoda never once tell Luke to defeat both Darth Vader and the Emperor too? I’m not arguing with the fact that objectively speaking, there were completely valid reasons that many people throughout the galaxy had to hate Darth Vader and want him killed for self-defense or justice at that point in the series.

I say this as an Anakin/Vader stan who also has a lot of sympathy for him, considering the fact that he seems to have CPTSD, a drug addiction to the force, and his entire life was also a never ending hell of abuse, compromised agency, exploitation, and oppression under corrupt authority. I don’t think he’s wholly innocent because he’s committed crimes without the prompting of those corrupt authority figures, too, he still had a conscience, and he did stop trying after going dark. However, those with positions of authority in the Jedi and Republic of his time had already fucked themselves over long before either he or even Palpatine came into the picture, and he definitely wasn’t given a strong opportunity to ever safely and reasonably escape this fate of corruption, considering just how much every authority figure in his life was an abusive, corrupt, hypocritical, manipulative, and oppressive asshole themselves in one way or another, except for his mother, who the Jedi and Republic left in slavery and chaos on Tatooine, only to never let them keep in touch.

Nonetheless, that still doesn’t excuse the fact that Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader murdered millions of people throughout the galaxy in cold blood for a little over two decades, and even before that, he wasn’t an innocent in his adulthood either. I can completely understand why his victims would hate him, and I can completely understand the validity of people thinking that the galaxy would be a safer place without him than with him by the time we got to A New Hope.

Still, there’s also the fact that, Obi-Wan and Yoda don’t seem nearly as concerned about the well-being of the galaxy as they claim to be to Luke in their quest to use him to kill their former student who they deliberately deceive him about. They know that Emperor Palpatine is the creator and heart of the Empire. They know he deceived and manipulated them all for years, particularly Anakin Skywalker. Yet, they aren’t really interested in destroying the Empire in and of itself in their quest for Luke. Obi-Wan and Yoda want to use him to clean up the mess they helped create with his father and ran away from.

If it were really as much as about the well-being of the galaxy as they claimed, then they would instruct for Luke to kill the Emperor too and be doing their best to fight with him by his side if they could. Obi-Wan and Yoda are deceiving and manipulating Luke to kill Vader to try to absolve themselves more than anything, so they were being rather selfish, even if subconsciously.

I’m not saying the entire Order and Republic deserved mass murder or that they’re responsible for all of Anakin’s crimes. However, he was able to feel desperate enough to go dark in the first place, not just because of Palpatine, but also because of Obi-Wan’s, Yoda’s, and the Council’s abusive, exploitative, hypocritical, and oppressive system and their emotional neglect. He had some experience with what it meant to react and be treated like a normal person outside of their cult, and Obi-Wan and the Council couldn’t adjust, so they made him the problem instead. His mother had taught him that abuse, emotional/individual denial, and slavery were wrong, but suddenly he was thrust into these broken systems where those things he got taught were wrong as a young child by his mother were labeled as “kind,” “selfless,” and “for the greater good” by those with positions of authority over him in those screwed up systems, so he regressed to a state of moral confusion and excessive deference/slave mindset in regards to corrupt authority and loved ones emotionally/psychologically in the Jedi Order/Republic and Empire/Sith out of fear of loss and the unknown until he broke as a result.

Just in general, most of the adults in the Jedi and Republic of the prequels are essentially a watered down version of their enemies. They have many of the same traits as their enemies. They’re controlling, and exceedingly hostile and distrustful towards enemies and outsiders. They’re just tamer. At best, they’re indifferent towards their own working class and the people of the outer rims, and at worst they’re enablers and/or perpetrators of “necessary” systematic abuse, crime, and oppression. They’re not above creating and enabling “necessary” collateral damage by deceiving, endangering, and manipulating others for their own “greater good” that’s safer than doing the right thing.

However, the old Jedi and Republic were more stable and better at living in denial of how much they sucked, while the Sith and Empire are just a more aggressive, hostile, obsessive, vengeful, and unfiltered version of what many of them were already proving themselves to be in the prequels, even before Palpatine got involved.

Aside from a few notable exceptions of Jedi who were actually heroic because they were raised to be good people before they got involved with either the Jedi or the Sith, or got out of them before it was too late, such as Luke Skywalker (screw the Disney sequels and BoBF), Ezra Bridger, and some of the force sensitive Rebels, most of the Jedi we meet in the series are and/or grow up to become self-righteous assholes.

Anakin clearly did not only learn from Sidious how to be a manipulative and ruthless bastard with his enemies in combat. Obi-Wan taught him that too.

Even Anakin/Vader showed more mercy for Obi-Wan in their two duels after Mustafar, and he also obsessively sought vengeance against him for roughly two decades. Granted, I do think that, much like with Padme, Luke in the OT movies after finding out he was his son, and even Palpatine, Anakin’s deference, devotion to, and love in regards to people with positions of authority over him, causes he gets pressured to serve, and/or those he considers or once considered family and friends, his simultaneous obsession with getting revenge on Obi-Wan for what he did to him on Mustafar, while also being shockingly hesitant and reluctant to go through with it when he actually faces him off again goes back to all those traits of devotion, deference, and loyalty in regards to people he grows attached to acting as his Achilles Heel at worst and his most redeeming quality at best.

Yeah, he’ll fight them on the dark side, try to convince them to join him on the dark side, recklessly endanger and lash out at them in a blind rage, and he even killed Kenobi via voluntary manslaughter twenty years later when Kenobi invaded the Death Star and faced him off in A New Hope because he did nothing to fight him back and just stood there. However, in regards to the people he cares about or once cared about, I don’t really think revelry for harming them or killing them is really there.

In regards to Obi-Wan, the desire for vengeance is more complex. On the surface, I think he is definitely angry with Obi-Wan for what he did to him on Mustafar and his mistreatment of him in the Jedi Order, but I also don’t think Anakin’s/Vader’s heart is in it nearly as much as he convinces himself it is. There is no revelry in him for killing Obi-Wan in A New Hope, just shock and solemnity, because deep down a part of him never stopped loving his old master. He obsesses over hunting down Obi-Wan to try to gain vengeance for ten years after RotS, but then still can’t bring himself to burn Obi-Wan alive and actually lets him get away.

I think the people who claim it’s like “the Joker’s obsession with Batman” miss the whole point of Anakin Skywalker. Yeah, he’s committed many abominable crimes, his victims had every right to hate him, but he’s not a maniacal psychopath with no traces of genuine humanity in his heart either. He didn’t let Obi-Wan go because he loves the chase like the Joker does in regards to Batman. He let them go and/or takes no joy in harming and/or killing either Obi-Wan or anyone else he connects to because he still holds genuine affection for them, even if he denies it. 

As for Obi-Wan, I do agree that he’s not ill-intended on the whole, nor does he doesn’t commit as many crimes as Anakin/Vader, Sidious, Maul, or the Sith. I also do recognize that his agency is at least partially compromised by being a victim of lifelong indoctrination in Yoda’s cult. However, I don’t think he was ever a particularly good person as an adult either. I think he was a lot more ambitious, hypocritical, manipulative, self-centered, vain, and surprisingly vicious in his desire for vengeance against enemies who personally wronged him than he was convinced. I do think he grew to genuinely care about Qui Gonn, Anakin, Luke, Leia, and Satine, but I also don’t think it was ever enough to outweigh his own desire to fit in and be seen as perfect by Yoda and the Council.

[daddyreid]

navigation.

hi! my name is sabrina (but you can call me brina) & i am so glad that you've found your way to my blog! the following is a masterpost of my introduction, rules, works & other fun stuff!

important: this user has cptsd and is emetophobic! please do not interact at all with any topics regarding v*mit. please tag emetophobia (the fear of v*m*iting or anything related to it) on your fics if possible!

♡

whether you're new to this blog, know me strictly from my fics, or are simply curious about the author, i am so glad that you're here! here are a few things about me to get us acquainted :)

name: sabrina (or brina) age: 23 pronouns: she/her myers-briggs: enfp orientation: bisexual my comfort shows: criminal minds, brooklyn 99, once upon a time, heartstopper, supernatural, stranger things, wednesday my comfort characters: spencer reid (criminal minds), bucky barnes (mcu), steve rogers (mcu), peter parker (mcu), anakin skywalker (star wars), sam winchester (supernatural), peter pan (ouat), albert dasilva (newsies), eddie munson (stranger things), steve harrington (stranger things), xavier thorpe (wednesday), enid sinclair (wednesday)

♡

important: all daddy/dom content will be tagged under "dd ___" to avoid getting flagged! (ex. #dd eddie munson)

content tags: #brina.txt, #reblog.txt, #published by brina, #from the library, #blurb.txt, #hc.txt, #photo.jpg, #moodboard.jpg, #gif.gif, #film.mp4, #art.jpg, #18+, #nsfw-ish, #nsfw, #cw bdsm, #cw dd/lg

character tags: under construction

personal tags: #brina.txt, #personal, #ineBRIated

[reylo-love-theme]

Specific personal reasons why Ben dying really hurt

Disclaimer: i know people have had many dif reactions to this movie and for those of you that liked it good for you. this is my personal opinion on my own blog so please don't attack or debate me in the comments just go make your own post please if you feel that. I respect you all and I'm just trying to cope.

This post is for people who are in a similar situation as me and want a place to relate or their thoughts turned into words.

1. I'm a childhood abuse victim myself and 2019 was a terrible year full of my trying to deal with my past and my cptsd and my toxic shame. I barely made it.

Ben Solo was a reminder that it's not too late to save yourself and that people you love do care for you. I literally leaned solely on reylo fanfiction during my darkest times for this aspect of hurt/comfort and redemption and recovery.

2. I had never went to watch a movie of my own free will (see number 1). Doing this was terrifying since I had to overcome so many triggers. I chose to watch TROS so that it would end my year on a happy note with a postive message of hope, love and recovery.

3. The only reason that I shipped Reylo was because I had investigated very throughly and had become certain they would get a happy ending.

I have a tendency of relying on fictional characters for the support I do not have in real life so I needed to choose who I love very carefully or else when I loose them I'm actually in terrible pain.

The worst thing was that I wasn't prepared for it. (Preparing and being nihilist had given me depression and I literally pulled myself out of that thought process for this hope of Ben living. It seemed so close to happening and I got stabbed in the stomach and left in a puddle of blood)

Now, I'm struggling really hard not to blame myself for falling for false hope again (I had made that mistake once and swore off hope for like 11 years) (even though I know that being so cynical is terrible for my health)

4.I stepped on Reylo in 2018/2019 fully and spent a whole year looking forward to this movie. It brought me so much joy and I tamped out my inner cynic that said "putting your hope in something you love will only let you down".

I told myself that even with all that has happened in 2019, making it to December and watching the movie would be symbolic for me (a way of saying "look world, I made it.")

5. The message the movie sends me is just.... I really can't. I don't understand why it couldn't be a happy ending for Ben who literally redeemed himself. For me personally, I don't consider a kiss and a smile and then death a happy ending. What does that mean for me? A person who related so heavily to this broken struggling character. Does it mean that all my pain was worth nothing in the end? That those who I love will never love me back or remember me or even care that I was abused and my trauma made me a literal walking self-defence mechanism? That the only ending the general population accepts as morally correct is for "bad" abuse victims to die?

And the message of Ben dying for someone he loves (while not a bad trope) is toxic because of the way it is shown. Even with the emoting on Rey's behalf, it's not enough to justify someone dying for that. (There just isn't enough romance or support from Rey (unlike TLJ)) It seemed like an unbalenced love (because of the way Rey just kept on rejecting him and hurting him without really trying to help (until the end where literally he sacrificed himself, would someone who loved you do that?)

And the additional message that Ben's family would help a random stranger but not the person that literally needed them and still loved them after all the abandoment he went through. My family literally turned a blind eye (or just blamed me as a weakling for reacting to it) to my abuse and that is what happens to Ben. Even at his death, not one single member of his family (Han was just a memory) was there to mourn him or even help him (Leia's disappearance thing I'm so confused on what the heck happened, why the heck did Maz smile if Ben just literally died and his mom died trying to save him.)

And no one bothered to be on his side, he literally had to redeem himself the whole way. That isn't a good message to people who need help. It's literally saying that you are the only one who can save yourself (not a bad message by itself but the strength of the message comes from the fact that others can stand by you as you save yourself not BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE WILL OR WILL HELP YOU)

Anakin sidelineing him for Rey was just salt in the wound.

As someone who's pain was literally ignored and laughed at by the whole family, this was immensely rage inducing.

And what about rey and her character development? I also had related to her for being abandoned by her parents and left to fend for herself. She was a nobody who was strong on her own. She didn't need to be related to a strong lineage. Additonally, ending up all alone on the same kind of desert she started at is not a good message. ( I get the nostalgia thing but they could have literally used any other character, Rey wasn't a good choice for that scene) First off, she wanted to get off jakku. She wanted a family. Ben told her she wasn't alone. Next, she needed to realize that being a nobody didn't mean she was worthless ( a strong and powerful message to ordinary girls) (not find out oops i was from a loving family all along!!!) That isn't good plot when she literally spend two movies recovering from her parents abandonment (it makes it seem like ohhh they loved you and this was the only best

thing they could do!! XOXO (this is a common victim blaming trick abuse apologizers use to silence victims pain)) it would have made sense if she found this out earlier but to do this to an already developed character arc is just sucky. Her turning dark influenced by palp is not as good a message as her turning dark influenced by her past and her overcoming it anyway. For star wars, a theme has always been hope, love and redemption and I feel like the theme was picked up but not carried through in one character, instead spread throughout everyone but leaving a sense of unsatisfactory ending since no one really ended their arc. (In my opinion, you can have a different one)

6. Ben dying. That is just cruel and sadistic..there were already so many "surprise they are alive illogically!" Moments that JJ could literally have pulled one for Ben a final time and no one would have batted an eye. It would have suited the style of the movie. It was such a bad shock for me. The movie already baited my heart several times with Ben nearly dying and I cheered internally when he came back. I held out my hope till the very end of the credits and this movie just made of fool of me. I was ready to gloss over any and all flaws and buy merch if only Ben had been loved and lived.

7. The way it affected me. (Warning this might be upsetting to read so skip if you don't want to hear about mental health right now)

I was in so much shock as I stumbled out of the theater that I literallt thought I was going to be okay. I couldn't feel anything and I felt sick and empty. (That's not a reaction a star wars movie should give or any "hopeful" movie)(this is coming from someone who has watched the sacrifical death trope many times and cried (it was a good hurt))

This wasn't because there was literally no resolution or purpose to the death. It seemed like a cliche trope failure of redemption=death. But with the added on "no mourning, superfical loss". (It would have been more acceptably had it been a side character, bad writing can excuse it, but for a main half of the protagonist this is just sick)

I wandered home mechanically on Friday and then as soon as I thought back to the scene where Ben smiled and died I broke down crying. And I lost all my appetite and felt nauseous for an entire two days. I barely ate two meals during that time because I was so distraught and my mental health crashed completely back into my worse cptsd symptoms and nightmares and insomnia and waking up to panic attacks. I wasn't functioning, I kept trying to pull myself together but my only postive coping mechanism(reading reylo fanfiction) was gone. In fact I felt betrayed that my coping mechanism would actually be the cause of my pain.

I completely felt like those two days were actually traumatizing and as someone who has actually experienced traumatic events I'm using the word in a serious way. Anything can hurt you badly enough if you put enough of your heart and vulnerability into it.

Now it's Monday I'm just trying to recover enough to go outside again but I feel really tired. I'm trying to salvage my christmas and my life as a big middle finger to whoever decided that abuse and mental health could be used as convenient plot points and just discarded and laughed at.

[necropsittacus]

you do anakin too,

@silmarilswan

i got anakin twice so doing this in one post

sexual orientation headcanon: bi

gender headcanon: look ik he has to get padme pregnant bc Plot(TM) but you can take trans dude anakin from my cold dead hands

mental illness/neurodivergent headcanon: bpd/cptsd, autism, also generally a metric fuckton of trauma

3 random headcanons: he wears black robes because he's just always really cold, he’d, strictly speaking, fallen to the dark side fairly early in the clone wars but still cared more than anything about his friends/family (aka @all the “you either are Selfless And Emotionally Repressed or a monster who cares only for Power” shit Fuck Off), he WANTS to trust people and let them help but Trauma(TM), and even logically knowing people care about him he has trouble believing it (from palp as much as anyone else, but he starts trusting palp more as he trusts the jedi less)

sorry that wasnt meant to be that sad omg

[cptsd-skywalker]

Oof I liked how your blog made some good points defending Anakin. Unfortunately, if you hate Padme or Anidala, Anakin would HATE you.

Lmao I don’t “hate” Anidala at all, I’m just more critical of it than others. I don’t see it as solely the fairytale romance others seem too. Anakin likely has CPTSD and Borderline Personality Disorder, so no he wouldn’t like me criticizing his “Favorite Person”, but that doesn’t make my claims any less valid.

Also, idk what you sought to accomplish by telling me my comfort character would hate me, but to be honest it stung in a personal way. I usually don’t get worked up over mail like this, and I’m not sure if it was meant in jest or not, but it stings a bit. 😓

I’m sure Anakin wouldn’t agree with a lot of what a say on here, given that he tends to push his own abuse aside and blames himself for everything that happened to him since his infancy. This is typical of abuse survivors. I too acted in anger when confronted with the possibility that the abuse I suffered crippled me. Didn’t make it untrue.

[cptsd-skywalker]

Anakin literally

YEETED

his abuser into

Oblivion.

#iconic #goodforhim

[cptsd-skywalker]

Hello again! Wanted to ask about Padme. Most pro Anakin bloggers also tend to like Padme. Why are you indifferent towards her beyond the reasoning of the power imbalance of Anidala? Would you like her better if she were lower class?

What kind of woman do you think Anakin should have married?

@synapticjive , this is for you dear. Also @fanfic-lover-girl for bringing this ask to me, as I’ve been meaning to make a long post about this for a while.

TLDR;

Besides the power Imbalance, (not to do with age but to do with Padme’s class status) in my opinion Padme is more in love with her fantasy of Anakin and not as much the real Anakin that exists. She sweeps under the rug massive red flags about his mental health (the sand people situation anyone ) when he’s been on the verge of a mental health crisis long before Revenge of the Sith. It isn’t her job to fix him, but as his partner I do think she should have encouraged him to seek mental health help or encouraged him to tell others about the Tuskens. I also don’t think she is as invested in Anakin as he is with her. In my opinion, she likes to keep him and her fantasy world totally separate from her loved reality as a senator (using Anakin as a kind of escape from that life) and so any real world or serious problems he has she puts away until they blow up massively.

Explanation:

In the new cannon material “The Queens Hope”, the newest novel by E.K. Johnston in a trilogy including “The Queen’s Shadow” and “The Queen’s Peril”, Anakin and Padme’s relationship is discussed and illustrated in detail. In combination with this book, the novelization of ATOC and TCW series, I have come to these conclusions about Anidala:

Padme is Anakin’s last in the flesh reminder of his mother. Anakin was raised in a single parent household, and I believe a portion of his love fro her stems from his desire to have a family again after losing his mother, and Padme remember his mother. This ties them together in his heart for importance. After shmi dies, Padme is Anakin’s only lifeline, meaning if their relationship goes south (for whatever reason) that Anakin’a chances of going off the deep end mentally are high.

You would think that stress that he is under to fulfill others expectations of him to his own detriment would be a red flag for Padme to encourage him to leave the Jedi or to at least lessen the power imbalance between them so he wouldn’t feel like he had to live up to these expectations where she is concerned. That he could be himself around her, so that he can form a healthy attachment to her. Instead she continues this idea of burdening him with her own high expectations of him by convincing him time and time again to stay in the Jedi Order to remain as a Jedi Knight. She does this even when he states multiple times how unhappy he is there, how badly the Jedi treat him (btw she always sides with the Council and Obi Wan when he brings up how they make him feel. She goes as far as to laugh at him in ATOC) and how much stress he is under living up to their idea of what he should be.

In the novels and in TCW she is quite taken with Anakin as this masculine adventurer ideal, a role that he plays for her but struggles with in moments of insecurity and difficulty. She makes him feel like he is supposed to always be a strong hero when he really needs someone who can understand his need to have a safe place to feel weak. It’s natural to want to relax and to not to want to be at war all the time. However, She loves him as her knight in shining armor, so when he wants to leave the order she is horrified. He says “I don’t care about all this deception I don’t care if they know we’re married” and she immediately corrects him “Anakin don’t say things like that”

Padme encourages his codependency by placing herself on a pedestal with him, and accepting her role as his Courtly Lady/Madonna. This is particularly important when we consider why Padme, an accomplished politician with charisma, grace, social accumin and wealth would want to marry someone she just spent a week with. The answer to me is that the danger, the adventure, the forbidden aspects are exactly why Padme wants to be with Anakin at all. Padme has lived her whole life in a super serious responsible bubble, and Anakin is her chance to let her hair down and be wild. There wouldn’t be anything wrong with this if this wasn’t the only thing holding them together, but honestly to me it is.

1. They have totally different personalities that do not mesh. Anakin is passionate and firey with an intense insecure while attachment style Padme is cool and detached and rational at all times. Really Padme makes a better Jedi mentally than Anakin (don’t shoot me for this, Obi Wan says almost the same thing “you should have been a Jedi) for how Padme conducts her life, emotions can be dangerous. Even Sabe warns her that her love for him will prove fatal as well stating “You always said when you gave your heart to someone it would be a disaster”, because Padme in love throws caution to the wind for her idea of fantasy romance. Padme in love is Padme entrenched in her deepest ideal with blinders on to everything but what she wants. The problem with Anakin is that he has severe mental health issues that can not be ignored. He is being groomed by sidious and he is being emotionally abused by the Jedi, yet Padme doesn’t see any of this becuase she only sees what she wants to see; Anakin the Hero With No Fear conquering all and coming home to sit at her feet and do whatever she needs him to do. Anakin loves Padme because she is the Madonna who gives his life purpose. These are two incompatible ideals.

2. Anakin needs Padme more than she needs him. Padme had a life before Anakin, and she would have a life after him if she were to leave him. Padme has a sister and parents and nieces and nephews. She has a network of best friends she has known since she was 14, and a further network of senate colleges and friends on planets all over the galaxy. She has a job she loves and finds worthwhile and she has a childhood of safety and love to draw on.

In contrast if Padme left Anakin, Anakin would lose all he has left. He does have Obi Wan in a sense, but considering his desire to leave the order and Obi Wans attitude towards those who leave the order it wouldn’t go well, (he no longer associates with them the same way, he wouldn’t antagonize Anakin but he’d make it known he didn’t approve and would probably shun him like Ashoka). Anakin lost his mother and all of his childhood friends remain in slavery. His childhood was hard on him.

Thus, Padme became Anakin’s sole personal emotional support. This brings an imbalance to their relationship which fuels Anakin’s attachment insecurity. This causes the jealously and the fear of losing her to increase 10 fold. In the Queen’s Hope, Anakin thinks of Padme all the time while on missions while he almost never comes up to her when she is on her own time with friends or family. Even though they just married she barely reflects on Him, never thinks of him personally except to remark how handsome he is (Anakin is so much more than just his looks), which leads me to believe that her reasons for marrying him were mostly sexual. Since I headcannon Anakin as demisexual based on his interactions with her this screams incompatibility to me.

3. Lastly, when Padme Anakin are at home they are always without exception doing one of 3 things, having sex, discussing the war, or fighting. The only positive interactions they have are when they are physically intimate(cuddling or getting in the mood). They talk about the war but never about what towels to buy or what food to eat. This has some issue to do with the action style way that the movies and books are written. There is very little room for domesticity. However, even in The Queens Hope, a book revolving around issues of them trying to balance domestic life with duty, Padme never compliments Anakin’s personality, just his looks, and to that end whenever we seen them together they are either , A.) Cuddling, or B.) Being erotic with each other. Padme does rearrange her schedule so that Anakin can sneak in at night to see her, but because of their need for secrecy Anakin is treated more like a secret affair than a marriage partner. Which brings me to my last point.

4. We’ve discussed that Padme is unable to bring up Anakin’s mental problems to him and prefers to bury them, but a similar thing could be said about Anakin. He is unable to accept any moral ambiguity in Padme at all. Any time she strays a hair from her ideals he is in her like a flea. It’s understandable to me that Anakin feels this way considering Padme is all he has, but in the long run he has to be able to see her as a fallible human being capable of being wrong. At the same time she needs to stop feeding into this desire he has of putting her above him. Even as a submissive he should not feel actually beneath her.

I’m conclusion: I think Anakin would have fared better with someone who either A.) was born in similar circumstances with similar trauma that could help him through his complicated feelings or at least relate to them; or B.) was able to remove themselves from the pedestal Anakin puts them on to make a more equal partnership that he can lean into. Anakin is needy and while for me I don’t consider that to be a bad thing it can be a bad thing of the other person doesn’t help the insecure person to feel safe and secure in the relationship. Padme is not capable of this to me for a number or reasons, namely the fact that she is more married to her job and ideals than to Anakin.

I hope that clears up some of my thoughts for you all. I know I probably left things out, please feel free to comment on here with your opinions. I know that was long.

[cptsd-skywalker]

A hallmark of victims of CPTSD is a huge desire for validation followed by self harm talk; Because you’ve been abused for so long that compliments are scarier than criticism. His face falls because Anakin feels like unless he’s perfect he’ll never be worthy of love. At the same time he thinks so low of himself that any time he gets that validation he becomes so scared of losing it that he can’t enjoy it. I really understand the struggle well. It’s hell. He needed someone to understand this and confront it. Obi Wan sees that Anakin has this never ending need for validation, but he doesn’t see it for what it is, a symptom of Anakin’s trauma. So he just corrects him without soothing him. So to Anakin, it feels like another reminder that he’ll never be worthy. It has the opposite affect Obi wan wants. It actually makes Anakin fight back harder to prove himself.

[cptsd-skywalker]

It annoys the heck outta me that people take Anakin’s words under the duress of intense stress seriously when he condemns himself but never when he stands up for himself or dislikes the way he’s treated in a situation. Like anytime he makes a negative comment about the Jedi Order or the Order straight up treats him horribly it’s all

“he’s an unreliable narrator, mentally ill! We can’t trust what he says about any abuse!!!”

Which go to hell!

He is mentally ill but that doesn’t make him an incompetent idiot or biased as if no mentally ill person can truly know the truth of their own experiences or stand up for themselves.

However, when Anakin says stuff like

“You didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker, I did”,

Then everyone’s all like:

“ SEE ! SEE! ANAKIN WASNT ABUSED OR GROOMED! HE SAID SO HIMSELF! IT WAS ALL HIM ALL ALONG!! HES AS BAD AS PALPATINE!!” .

Like Jesus. Cherry Pick much?!!!