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Were we going to write on discord still?

There is a belief that was popular decades ago, (and in some circles still is), that you should let a child cry for awhile. You can't simply rush to a baby every time they cry, because they'll be sissies. You need to teach them independence.

This is a notion that has since been disproven. Babies are not manipulative. They are babies. They can only communicate by crying. And if you attend to their needs immediately, and give them the love and affection they need, they thrive much better.

Compared to their peers who are left to cry it out, these babies are less clingy and more independent and self-confident as they become young children and adults. The reason for this is that they know they are valued. Their wants/needs are important. They have the security of knowing they have a support system. They feel able to step forward and explore things and be independent because they have that foundation of love and support. They're safe.

Conversely, the children who were told to cry it out found it harder to regulate their emotions. They were more apt to be clingy when people finally spent time with them. They were also less willing to step out of their comfort zone. Despite the intent of their upbringing, these children struggled more because they were not granted a secure attachment style.

I think this is something to consider with Anakin Skywalker. Anakin is forcibly separated from his mother. His emotional needs are not attended to. It is critical to the needs of children to have that security. Not having it makes things harder. It is not greedy for a child to crave this connection; it is necessary for their healthy development. Young children are literally wired to see long-term separation from their parents/caregivers as life or death.

The above is not the only way Anakin is failed by the system. The Jedi also play fast and loose with Anakin's new relationships. Take the Hardeen arc in TCW, Obi-Wan fakes his death and Anakin is not told until far too late. He is told he is wrong for being upset about that. Anakin also reaches out in AotC to Obi-Wan looking for that secure attachment by saying he sees Obi-Wan as a father; Obi-Wan does not indicate he reciprocates this sentiment furthering Anakin's insecurity.

The Jedi/Obi-Wan seem to think that doing things like this, taking away or denying Anakin’s attachments, will make Anakin find it easier to let go. That he’ll finally learn this lesson. However, the opposite is true. Anakin will cling tighter, because it is necessary to have these connections in your life, and Anakin cannot trust that he can be sure in them.

Like the baby that is left to cry it out, Anakin does not know when or if support is coming. If the Jedi wanted to teach Anakin how to accept loss, they’d have been better off simply being there for him, holding his hand metaphorically if not literally, and helping him process grief as life gave it to him…not as they inflicted it on him. Indeed, as was the case with Obi-Wan, the people who are supposed to care for him may even be the ones to choose to inflict unnecessary pain on him. How can Anakin trust this affection wholeheartedly and feel safe? And if he does not feel safe, it’s that much harder to grow.

Anakin will also feel the need to try to please people in authority. He will be less openly independent as a result. (although I think the Order may want that.) Obi-Wan might say "your need for victory Anakin, it blinds you," but there is a reason Anakin is always seeking after that. Because how else can he get what he needs? And all of this is without even considering his childhood history of abuse in slavery, because Anakin has learned he needs to please people in power to be safe.

Slavery was also going to affect his attachment style. While Anakin was secure in his mother’s affection, slavery provides another kind of insecurity. Families in slavery are often torn apart, because of people being sold to different owners and/or places. Anakin knew full well that as soon as he was old enough to be weaned, he could be torn from his mother at any moment.

When Anakin works in Watto's shop, he helps keep that business afloat. He knows full-well that if Watto's business suffers, it could mean his mother is sold away from him. As a consequence, it becomes his responsibility to protect the people he cares about. It is all on him.

Enter AotC, and Anakin is unable to reach his mother in time, confirming to him that once again it is his failure. Because it was him who was supposed to be her protector, same as it was when he was a kid. In order to process grief and loss associated with death, people must first come to terms with the trauma associated with that death if there is any. Anakin is never allowed to do this, so a loved one's death is now even more tightly twined in his head as his fault. (And then he goes to war and more and more people die under his command, and Anakin blames himself no matter how good he is.) Because it is on Anakin to keep the family together. If Anakin is not good enough, he will lose people.

Anakin blaming himself for things he shouldn’t is also normal of abuse victims. He needs to know what he did wrong, why did he get slapped or beaten etc. As a child, he’ll internalize blaming himself rather than realizing that he didn’t do a thing to deserve it and it’s not on him.

Anakin has now been primed to expect loss, to fear it and know it can come at any time, and only he can prevent it from happening, and only if he is good and strong enough. Slavery and the Jedi have taught him this. It is all on him to fight the external forces that would take people away from him. And when things go wrong it must be his fault.

What does this mean, ultimately? It means Anakin is at war with himself. He has a deep need to cling to emotional connections. However, to be a good Jedi, or at least seen as that, he can't do that. And he needs to please people in power. Anakin learns to pretend and hide as his mental health deteriorates to even more distressing levels.

And when the world falls apart, Anakin reverts to his most primal self as is typical in these situations. He needs Padme because she is the only one who he has that security with, and he feels he can’t lose her too. And it must be on him to prevent Padme's death. Because it is always on Anakin and no one else to protect his family, and all the bad things that happen must, of course, be all his fault, because he just wasn't good enough. He also needs to please the person who is now in power. He can’t stop the horror; he’s not strong enough; Palpatine pulls all the strings, but he thinks he can at least keep Padme and the baby safe.

We should have seen him use the Jedi Code to justify his atrocities, just to fuck with the Jedi for fun.

"Oh, you're sad about the murdered younglings? Mourn them do not. Miss them do not <3"

"Oh, you're sad about the genocide of your entire religious order? Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force <3"

"Oh, you're sad about the destruction of your culture, and your whole way of life? Attachment leads to jealousy. Worrying about what we can't control and clinging to what we think is ours is wasted time and energy. The only constant in life is change <3

"Oh, you're traumatized and you fear what's gonna happen to you next? Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering <3"

And he should have said all this shit with the nastiest, most gleeful smile on his face while staring directly at Yoda

looks an awful lot like the boy in this one.

I’m pretty sure it was a deliberate casting choice.  After all, Anakin is not only literally slaughtering that Jedi youngling, he’s also symbolically and emotionally slaughtering the innocent little boy he used to be. It’s also significant that the two scenes take place in the same location. The Jedi assault on young Anakin began in that room, and that was where he ended it.

You see, little Ani Skywalker of Tatooine was a good boy.  Everyone said so: his mom, his friends, random strangers, even his master Watto thought he was a credit to his species. Ani was loving son, a dutiful worker, and a generous person who performed random acts of kindness for friends and strangers alike. He had pride in his abilities, but it was justified and tempered by his understanding of his place. Yes, he had ambition too, but freedom is an understandable and worthwhile ambition, especially since wanted it for others too.  The Anakin who lived on Tatooine had a shitty childhood, but a solid and generally positive sense of self. He was a good boy and he knew it.

Then he stood in the Council room and found out he was wrong. He wasn’t a good boy, he was dangerous. His concern for his mother? Dangerous. His desire to help others and damn the consequences? Dangerous? His Force powers and various skills? Dangerous. His ambition? Dangerous. 

Anakin’s introduction to and initial rejection by the Council was the start of a 10+ year campaign to utterly destroy his sense of self. The Jedi told him that all the things that make him Anakin are wrong and bad and dangerous. They treated him with suspicion and distain and made him doubt himself. Anakin from TPM is outgoing and self-confident. Ten years later, Anakin in AotC is hesitant, deferential, and easily lead. He has been taught to doubt and even fear his own thoughts and feelings because he is, after all, dangerous.

It may be partly because we see every step of Anakin’s journey, but… Count Dooku had spent decades as part of the Jedi Order, was raised as a traditional Jedi, and still turned to the dark side within a few years after Qui-Gon’s death. Yes, he was friends with Palpatine, but Palps was twenty years younger than Dooku. Palps probably wasn’t that huge of a deal in his life initially. And when Dooku was in the Clone Wars, he was already a Sith.

Then there’s Krell. Krell has visions of impending doom, and that’s all we have in canon. However, Krell, like Bariss and potentially Nadhir, is implied to have gone dark due in part to the pressures the war and the questions it raised. However, there is no reason to believe Palpatine was cultivating their mindset personally.

Then there’s Anakin. The guy who has at least one mental illness (A French psychiatric or psychological academy- I forget which- diagnosed him with Borderline Personality Disorder, and there are others disorders he could have), a traumatic background, and was denied contact from his mom. He has rocky relationships and more issues than a star has photons. He’s had a Sith lord and master manipulator subtly grooming him for darkness for thirteen years, putting as much effort into it as into conquering the galaxy. He was on the front lines of one hellish war at the ripe old age of nineteen, and had a ton of responsibility. And it still took the Council and Palpatine using him as a double agent, visions of someone he loved dying, and a bit of trickery to get him to turn to the dark side.

Revenge of the Sith is so painful because Anakin struggles to stay in the Light until the very. Last. Minute. He immediately regrets killing a helpless Dooku in rage, refuses to give in to Palps insinuation in the opera scene, is shaking with rage when he realizes Palpatine is a Sith and has been behind everything. Hell, I even think that the reason Anakin stops himself from killing Palpatine right there and run to Mace instead is because Palpatine used Jedi values to guilt trip Anakin about using anger to focus:

[screenshot]

Palpatine says “I can feel your anger, it gives you focus, makes you stronger.” and that is when Anakin powers down his saber, as if suddenly realizing what he’s doing.

I don’t think it was that difficult to prevent his Fall, to be honest. If Obi-Wan was there (which is why he had to leave); if Mace gave Anakin the slightest reassurance instead of spelling out he had never trusted Anakin up until then (”you’ll have earned my trust”, seriously Mace? You fought a war with him for three years); if Mace had given Anakin something, anything to do, like coordinate a Temple defense or even contact Obi-Wan and let him know what happened, anything but just sit still in the Council chambers where he never felt comfortable in, Palpatine might not have been able to give that final push.

STAR WARS Episode 3

Revenge of the Sith (2005) || Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)

blowing up your life? abandoning your religious order with fiery vengeance? burning your bridges with people because you think they've betrayed you and all your emotions are so big but you're an adult now dammit?

Also Sith Elsa is evidently a thing:

And then there’s this gem:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qSgJeVwjnpc

now THIS is podracing

(a lil painting inspired by @lesbianahsokatano‘s fic from the Legacies Entwined zine, thank you for the ahsoka visits tatooine brainrot 💖)

BONUS:

You don't want to know how long my internal screaming and sick feeling over seeing Palpatine touch Anakin (who did NOT want to be touched) on screen took to click. Because I honestly confused being molested with being physically abused as a child. But once I realized...I.

And Palpatine KEPT putting himself alone with children too. No one saw. And for Anakin coming from Tatooine? It could have been worse he thinks. It's just the cost of social climbing. It's what HAPPENS to people like. He would have normalized it because of his history of trauma. And no one thought to check.

As a trauma survivor, watching anytime Palpatine touches Anakin in a frankly sensual way on the shoulder or arms in TCW or the Prequals always makes my stomach churn. It’s very predatory. It always reminds me of my own abuser. It’s part of the reason I headcannon him as explicitly sexually abusing him, though in cannon the covert sexual abuse is bad enough.

This is the definition of child grooming.

Palpatine purposefully exposes Anakin to sexually explicit and inappropriate situations to destroy his boundaries little by little, while also cultivating a relationship of closet close secrecy. He makes Anakin feel safe with him while slowly turning up the temperature in Anakin’s pot until he is boiling and none the wiser. As a child, he knows Anakin is desperate for a real connection to family after being separated from his mother. He knows that Anakin is vulnerable and that he has the Jedi at his mercy, so he uses that power to get Anakin alone to have private talks with the child in his private rooms. Deeply inappropriate at best and blatant CSA coding at worst.

You are not the only one to notice inappropriately sexual undertones in thier relationship. Just look at their exchange whenever Anakin is turned to the darkside. Anakins boundaries have been so thoroughly destroyed that he feels totally culpable with Palpatine even though at this point he has only actually attacked 1 Jedi. He technically speaking could turn back, but because of the grooming and secrecy and the isolation that Palpatine has inflicted on Anakin; Anakin feels as though he is just as guilty when in reality he is a victim. That is exactly how child predators keep their victims from telling. They tell their victims that they wanted the abuse and that they are just as guilty as the abuser, that they won’t be believed or will even be punished, that they will loose everything they love. In this case for Anakin it means loosing his place in the Jedi Order, loosing Obi Wan as a friend, and loosing Padme his only love. For Anakin, he is choosing the option where at least he can save one of those options, while the other two are a foregone conclusion. He believes because of the conditioning he’s been under since he was 9 by both the Jedi and Palpatine that he is a lost cause the moment he so much as toes the line of the darkside, which is of course a sunken cost fallacy that he has already sold his soul to the devil.

The sexual imagery in the scene wherein Anakin is on his knees and in total submission to Palpatines whims is not lost on me @komikbookgeek. It smacks of the power dynamic of an abuser who has completely subdued their victim into emotional slavery, and it is not a coincidence that many 18+ fics have interpreted the scene after as a sexual one. It’s a clear coding of their power dynamic reading to me the same as when my father sexually abused me. He told me that I had “done it once and liked it” so the other times made no difference. He had already sullied me, so me telling him no was a mute point and entirely unreasonable. I believed him much like Anakin believes Palpatine. You are already worthless to them. But you have great use for me. It is so heartbreaking to me that Anakin remains trapped in that horrific cycle for the next 20 years.

This scene was no accident in my opinion:

https://cptsd-skywalker.tumblr.com/post/688946571446026240/anakincito-this-scene-is-insane-bc-the

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No where in Star Wars is it implied that Sheev is at all into Anakin Skywalker like y’all despise this man on a delusional level when his only crime is being a good antagonist.

Star Wars fans is crazy like this some Superman level leaps and bounds conclusions that y’all jumping to here.

Y’all just can’t hold anakin Skywalker accountable for his own nonsense choices so y’all go into delusion and use fanfic as some kind of evidence of something that is never once implied in these films ?

Dawg just say “yeah I’m mad because he’s a good villain” and leave it at that. Y’all outta pocket with this bogus take istg😭

If y’all stopped taking shit so personal yall would see that Sheev one the funniest and entertaining mfs in Star Wars. Dude whole purpose in Star Wars is to be comically evil

I would like to make 3 points.

1. Anakin being a victim of trauma and abuse and Anakin being guilty of crimes including murder are not mutually exclusive ideas.

The idea that Palpatine wouldn’t abuse Anakin sexually when he abused him in every other way is unrealistic. It doesn’t mean it happened, it also isn’t out of the question for a man who’s character blows up entire planets of people without a thought. I think he would do anything to break Anakin and bring him to the darkside.

HOWEVER

2. I never said that Palpatine explicitly sexually abused Anakin in cannon. That is my personally headcannon based upon what I know from personal experience as a survivor and as a grooming victim. All the signs are there but you’re right there is no cannon that explicitly states it . We do however have evidence of covert sexual abuse.

Case in point:

Palpatine takes Anakin to a seedy bar and shows him the underbelly of Coruscant including sexual slavery and drugs and strippers. This is wildly inappropriate for any child. It is a form of covert sexual abuse to expose children to sexually charged imagery and situations with the goal of normalizing it. He is grooming Anakin against the Jedi using Anakins experience with abuse and slavery as a means to prove that the Jedi don’t really care about others.

3. What I DID state was that Palpatines tactics used to groom Anakin for the darkside are the same tactics used by sexual predators to groom their victims. This is cannon.

In canon he:

A.) Established a relationship of trust with Anakin at a young age.

B.) Used that relationship to foster a secrecy between them where he encouraged Anakin to tell his secrets and then isolated him by telling him no one else but Palpatine could understand him.

C.) Manipulated Anakin with those abuse tactics to instill a fear in Anakin to tell anyone about what was happening between them for fear of being blamed or shunned.

D.) Created a Father-Son dynamic to exploit Anakins vulnerabilities and desire for a family to pinion him in a sunken cost fallacy where he thought he was already to sullied to be saved. Thus he went full force to the darkside.

It’s up to you of course what you consider cannon, but obviously it’s super easy to dismiss everything in a post with 2 sentences. “Who cares about the prequels only the original trilogy is cannon to me” with that logic you can make anything. Also, this person in the original ask was asking my personal opinion, so I presented my headcannon and the evidence that supports it. You are not the only one you gets to interpret this story and you are not the only one with an idea of what is cannon and what is not.

ALSO. In the movies PALPATINE GROOMED ANAKIN. You can’t get around this. Is established fact. It’s cannon. I’m sorry it makes your fave look bad fam. I’m the only one evidently who can like a problematic character and still a knowledge what they did was wrong. Anakin having trauma and being a criminal are not exclusive ideas.

Like I get hating Palaptine because he the villain and he evil but he isn’t the devil totally like y’all acting like Anakin’s is some patron saint when he choose all the wrong he did tbh

I mean, by your own standards, then wasnt Qui Gon Jinn also an groomer? Or is it just when the edgy space wizards enlist you that it becomes “grooming” instead “being steered down the path of righteousness”?

Is Kenobi one too? Or do you just give free passes to the side that you like?

Qui Gon “I’m going to cheat in dice so I can purposefully separate Anakin from his mother and not even give Shmi the rundown of what his life will be like upon joining” Jinn is totally innocent

Obi “I’m going to use my relationship to Anakin to influence him to spy on an government official and order it off the books so there’s no evidence linking back to the Jedi” Wan Kenobi is totally innocent.

Like anakin was in a position where he had no choice or power, neither did his mother. Was an ten year old anakin supposed to say “no I won’t join the Jedi and become a slave again but this time separated from my mom”? He literally couldn’t say no, neither could his mother.

Why didn’t they get Shmi out of slavery? Jinn could have done something or asked for something.

Oh, because Jinn wanted to use anakin as some kind of puppet for his chosen one delusions and Shmi would have wanted her son with her if she knew the reasons behind Jinn’s “altruism”

Let’s not forget that Jinn used his influence as a Jedi to push Anakin into joining and preyed on Anakin’s childlike innocence.

Say what you about Palpatine but anakin could have killed him. The only one who made anakin join Palpatine in the end was Anakin.

Anakin was anti sith leading up to his fall but only switched because he wanted to save padme that bad. Palpatine never is like “oh yeah I love the sith you should join them”’. But Jinn definitely is out there actively trying to sway Anakin into joining the Jedi.

If anybody did anything to Anakin Skywalker, it was Jinn for purposely separating a kid from his mom, not freeing his mom so that she could never be in his life as a parent, and not even telling Shmi what she was handing Anakin off to.