#stanakins really have the worst image of Anakin

[short-wooloo]

There are worse kinds

Originally posted in discord

(disclaimer, slavery is bad, there is no excusing it, it's evil and wrong, do not mistake my words here for condoning it)

So something I've noticed that's been bugging me,

All the time when I see people bring up Anakin's past as a slave they frame it as the most horrifically traumatizing, abusive thing that ever happened ever, and because they Jedi did not understand his suffering they did not properly help him and deal with his issues

but like, the text doesn't support this at all

Despite how some people try to make it out to be like what African Americans experienced in the American system of slavery (big surprise there, this racist fandom trying to say "white person suffered just as much"), the slavery Anakin experienced was a fairly... um, how shall we say, "banal" form

first off, lets consider differing kinds of slavery

Labor - the image of slavery that more often than not comes to mind, the labor intensive kind, farm work, mining, or factory workers

“sporting” - the best example I can come up with here would be gladiator slaves, the kind used for entertainment and competitive purposes

sex - slaves kept for the sexual pleasure of their master (eugh eugh eugh)

servants - the “housekeeping” variety of slavery, slaves for cooking, cleaning, looking after children, and serving at their masters whim

war - slaves trained to really fight, the uncommon variety of slavery, as there’s an inherent risk in arming and training a slave to fight

business - employees that don’t have to be paid, slaves which are used to run a business, serving as clerks, aids to the slave owner, or helping customers

Anakin (and Shmi) fall more into the final category, Watto is using them to run his business, cleaning the shop, organizing junk parts, etc, though in Anakin’s case he does fall more into a sporting use with podracing (chariot racing would be the best analogy to this, but I’m not actually sure if there ever were chariot races where the racers were slaves)

Ok, right here I’m about to sound like a total slavery apologists so just... bear with me ok?

the fact that Watto is keeping slaves is morally reprehensible, its wrong, he’s a bad person for doing it, and it shouldn’t happen

that said, as far as slave owners go, he’s not the worst

Watto’s short with Anakin, he’s bossy, he’s greedy, and bad-tempered, but that’s about it

“But the bomb put inside slaves!”

yeah, that’s a horrible thing to do, but we never actually see it demonstrated in the film, hell, Watto doesn’t even make the threat of using it, we’re told about it offhandedly (the scene doesn’t even linger on it) by Anakin who seems rather blase about it

“But Watto makes Anakin podrace!”

And?  Little mr. adrenaline junkie does not care, he loves it, he complains whe Shmi won’t allow it, he brags about how special good at it he is, he loves chasin that high, going on reckless high-speed rides, and he does so for the rest of his life

It just seems to me like Anakin considers podracing to have been the best part of his time as a slave,

Basically per what the movies, the real immutable text of Star Wars says, the slavery Anakin experienced was in no way a good thing, but it was not a horrific as it could have been or how stanakins make it out to be

but it does make for a convenient excuse for him to act like a psychopath during the Zygerria arc, and an excuse for the stanakins to excuse his behavior and blame the Jedi