#star wars yoinketh away

[adragonsfriend]

Congratulations, It's a Boy!

Anakin: i think our kid is gonna be a girl

Padmé: I think our kid is gonna be a boy

Fandom: aww they were both right lmao

Me: actually Padmé was right, because while she gave birth to twins, neither of them were raised by Anakin and Padme, and when Luke and Leia learned about their bio-parents, only Luke ever called himself their kid.

Leia is an adult with agency and values who does not consider Anakin anything other than a genetic donor, and would actually hate for the person who tortured her and helped kill her parent and destroy her planet to be considered her father.

Genuinely the lack of respect for the concept of her adoptive parents being her actual parents, and the insistence that she gets all her traits from Anakin and Padme is incredibly weird. (Not aimed at AUs where Anakin is not a deadbeat fascist, write on). With Luke, Beru and Owen are so often erased from his story as though he was just always casting about for family—like he didn’t already have one—it’s insane. Like yeah he called them his uncle and aunt, but they were the people who raised him. Emotionally and logistically the roles they filled were those of parents.

This is for the other Double Agent Vader fans, but genuinely one of my favourite things about those stories is that they take the Organas seriously as Leia’s parents while allowing Anakin to also be important to her. They also take seriously that Luke lost Beru and Owen and was, yk, also still grieving at the end of A New Hope

Anyway I’m tired of hearing about how Leia’s righteous anger or her bravery and sense of humor are totally from Anakin and her involvement in politics is all Padme, when she has two caring, brave, intelligent, funny parents who were involved in both politics and the rebellion.

Tldr; Anakin and Padmé have one kid, his name is Luke, and the reason he’s their kid is because he, as an adult with agency and values, decided he was their kid.

[adragonsfriend]

Upon reflection, having it implied that saying "Anakin can both be traumatized and responsible for his actions, (which is not the same thing as blaming him for his trauma)," means that I don't like his character, or that I think anything along the lines of "he's inherently bad," is actually hilarious and I'm no longer mad about it. Like,,,

My dear critics, I did not write over 100k (so far) of fanfic about him going on a time travel redemption arc, in the relatively famous in SW fandom "Anakin actually was already redeeming himself thru stories and being a double agent and is possibly the coolest character ever AU" because I think he's inherently bad person. I am so incredibly down for the fact that he is capable of so much good. For 24 years he makes literally the worst choices possible, and then he is still capable of making a good one. That's the WHOLE point.

His potential for good is why it's sad that he makes bad choices. No one gives a fuck when Palpatine does war crimes because he's presented to us narratively as a force of nature, not as a person. Anakin IS presented to us as a person. He could always choose differently.

But he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't. And he doesn't.

AND THEN HE DOES!!!

Writing a fix it centering on him is largely just a matter of choosing any one of those "And he doesn't"s, and changing it to an "And then he does!"

[adragonsfriend]

One of the unfortunate casualties of time traveling double agent Anakin back to the beginning of the clone wars is that Ahsoka will never meet him as a doofus irresponsible teenager who thinks a padawan would "slow him down," and therefore the vibes that first caused her to call him Skyguy are simply not present. Almost 40 year old Anakin who's been a proper sith lord and then a very serious double agent simply isn't someone you think to call Skyguy. He has 'depressed old man' vibes, not 'make fun of me immediately i'm an idiot/asshole' vibes.

By proxy, I don't think BHOT Anakin calls Ahsoka Snips either. It probably helps him separate her from the original Ahsoka, which is important because thanks to him not rejecting her and generally being far more responsible with the 501st and her training, BHOT Ahsoka is having a very different experience of being a padawan.

Snips and Skyguy just happen to be casualties of that experience.

[adragonsfriend]

Another casualty of BHOT (Anakin time travels back to the beginning of the clone wars after being a Sith Lord and then a double agent) is that Anakin no longer eats bugs. He could pick up the practice again, but after a decade and a half of eating through a tube I think his tolerance for putting anything squirmy in his mouth is totally gone.

Seriously, this man only bothers to remember to eat because not eating would be unhealthy which would be bad for his revenge plans. How he remembers to eat is by adhering religiously to a daily schedule of chowing down on ration bars and nothing else. Obi-Wan and Ahsoka both think he’s insane, and even the clones think he’s a little weird about ration bars.

[adragonsfriend]

Need everyone to understand that saying “the SW timeline always turns out worse if Anakin doesn’t have Luke and Leia as kids” makes the future of the galaxy contingent on Padmé’s willingness to have sex with Anakin (not even to mention Anakin’s willingness to have sex with Padme or overall readiness to raise children)

To suppose that this is a good or normal idea is to suppose that either (a) Padmé falling for/being attracted to Anakin is an inevitability—not true—or worse (b) she needs to be willing to give up her sexual autonomy for the sake of the universe.

Frankly if you give a shit about the reproductive rights of anyone, especially anyone with a uterus, (including anyone who has one and would prefer not to), the idea that anyone needs or deserves to have kids—let alone biological kids with a specific person of their choosing—is one you need to remove from your head immediately and with prejudice.

But y’know it’s fiction so also do whatever I guess, I’m not your parent. Food for fucking thought

[adragonsfriend]

Everyone celebrate the occasion of my first transphobic anon hate with me!

Only a terf would ignore my post about respecting reproductive autonomy in narratives to give into the desperate need to cross out four scary words.

To anon, see the neopronouns in my bio and try getting mad about obscure star wars lore like the rest of us, you'll be happier. See it goes like this:

“Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” — Yoda

[adragonsfriend]

A Changing Public Consciousness about the role of Droids in SW fanfic

^^^ i came up with a nice title but I'm actually just annoyed

Had a moment the other day when I was writing a droid character and realized they were being creative and that the real world setting around fictional droid and robot characters being creative has changed so much in just a few years because of AI that I need to add a note about my character's existence not being intended as a commentary because I was not thinking of real world AI when I made them. A couple years ago this would've just been a little droid and now someone's gonna (kinda validly) see all this crap surrounding it. Honestly I'm kind of mad about it tbh. Just wanted this droid to be a linguistics nerd and now I have to do politics in my author's note?

get out.

(idk if it's less or more of a problem when playing in Fialleril's double agent vader sandbox, since droids are fully people in their hc. KD-7 (Kadee) was first posted on ao3 in like 2016 when this shit was not a fucking problem)

[adragonsfriend]

Welcome!

I write about star wars meta, my own fic, other people's fics, whatever. In general this is my thinking through what I say blog, and I rarely reblog things here unless I have something substantive to add. Below is a masterlist of meta, which I try to keep up to date. I tag anything that's arguing directly with other people or being particularly salty as "star wars yoinketh away," if anyone wants to avoid that kind of thing.

Table of Contents

Star Wars Meta

Star Wars as a piece of Media

"Why you no therapist, Star Wars?"

"If Anakin could've been open about his marriage..."

A Statement about Good and Evil

Mace Windu & American Moor

Time Travel Fics: Developing Themes and Considering Disability

Jedi/Sith Meta

Cultural Relationships to Pain: Sith, Jedi (also Amavikka)

"The Jedi are slaves to their doctrine..." & Jedi cultural context

"Do or do not, there is no try"--A contextual analysis

Why does Depa take 12 yr old Caleb as a Padawan?

Vaapad, Mace Windu, Emotional Control

Anakin's AotC dreams

Mace Windu & Luke Skywalker: Comparison

Purple Lightsabers

Other Characters

Padme is not a Witness

Congrats! It's a Boy (Anakin only has one kid)

Shorter, Randomer thoughts

Luke's Visions in ESB

Palpatine should have a pug

Writing Dooku

Aurebesh Alphabet

Reading Shatterpoint by Matthew Stover

We meet Vader in AotC

Yoda is not a Boomer

Force User Graphs

Amavikka (Fialleril) Meta

Leia's Role in Amavikka Mythology

Cultural Relationships to Pain: Amavikka, (also Sith, Jedi)

Amavikka cultural context ("The Jedi are slaves to their doctrine...")

On Writing Ekkreth Stories

Biting His Own Tale (ao3)

How Palpatine uses Stories

Dooku has Anxiety and no idea what is going on

Anakin's Ekkreth Mask Drawing, Painting

Ryloth Worldbuilding (& Syndulla Family)

Fungi

Casualties of BHOT Anakin (1), (2)

Other Fandoms

(Starwars is still somehow involved, sometimes)

Wonder Woman and Letting Go