Just Another Stranger

My dad has 4 half siblings and two step siblings. They're all a decent bit younger than him. When I was a teenager, we went to a family reunion, and I realized something—my dad did not respect his siblings. He looked down on all of them. He saw them as fuck-ups and overgrown children. My dad had the American dream: well paying management job, suburban house, wife, and three kids. My aunt and uncles did not. Excluding my aunt, none of them were married or in serious relationships. They hadn't really settled into long term careers. Several of them were working the kind of jobs that get called "Unskilled labor." So he looked down on them because the youngest one was in his thirties (and several were much older), and yet none of them had "settled down" into what he saw as lifelong, permanent careers and relationships and lives. He was polite to their faces, sure, but I heard how he talked about them behind their backs, to my mother.

And then a few years ago, we visited his brothers again for Thanksgiving. And I realized something again--he respected them now. He saw them as equals. Why? Well. All of a sudden, every single one of them had serious, committed romantic partners. They didn't even need to still be with those partners—one of my uncle's fiance passed away from cancer before they could marry—just having had one showed that they matured into a real adult participating in society. In fact, at one point, my aunt was telling my mom about how one of my uncles was no longer living in an apartment she owned, but instead, after having a steady girlfriend for about a year, he moved in with her. And my mom literally said to my aunt, "wow. Look at that. He finally grew up."

One of the lines that frequently gets repeated about anti-aspec sentiment is "why would anyone hate asexuals/aromantics/etc? They aren't even doing anything." And that's exactly it. In the eyes of amatonormative culture, we aren't doing anything. Adults are supposed to do things. That's how you become a member of society.

The full quote is of course:

The Emperor: "Your hate has made you powerful. Now fulfill your destiny, take your father's place by my side."

Luke Skywalker: "Never. I'll never turn to the dark side. You failed, Your Highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me."

The Emperor: "So be it, Jedi."

And YES AMAZING ICONIC

BUT

Why Your Highness, Luke?

The proper address is Your Majesty, that's an Emperor.

But consider that this guy is a Tatooine moisture farmer and his exposure to royalty at this point in his life is exactly Princess Leia Organa.

And she doesn't address herself by any special title, so his mental file of royal titles actually comes from Han and Leia bickering at each other

So his entire understanding of royal protocol comes from exactly two sources:

Han Solo

And being a menace

And Han doesn't actually say Your Highness most of the time!

Luke's mental filing cabinet of "ways to address royalty" consists of: Your Highness, Your Highnessness, Your Worshipfulness, Your Supreme Exalted Pain In My Ass

It's actually a combination of a minor miracle, a supreme act of will, and a smidge of luck that he whipped out "Your Highness" at all, that could have gone sideways fast

Picture:

Luke is exhausted, emotionally compromised, and running on approximately four hours of sleep accumulated over the last week.

He opens his mouth.

"You have failed, Your High—"

And somewhere in his brain, Han Solo's voice echoes across the years:

Highnessness.

Luke has to fight for his LIFE, not against the dark side but against the intrusive thought.

"You have failed, Your High—"

highnessness

"—ness. I am a Jedi—"

Meanwhile Vader, under several dozen layers of other stuff happening at the exact same time, whose formative experience with royalty was with a QUEEN, is internally flabbergasted by his insolent child

For Force sake, Luke, that's an Emperor. It's "Your Majesty."

until i opened it, and it was DUCKS