May The Force Be With You

some people don’t deserve fanfics, much less for free.

also even if authors didn’t tag any specific warnings but they used the “creator chose not to use archive warnings” tag, then that is your warning.

NATALIE PORTMAN as Padmé Amidala

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (2002)

None of the signup methods require a password. It only takes email and birthday. Minimizing time on the signin or signup screen makes it harder for people quitting to avoid relapse.

"Characters" on the website will send messages "on their own" (prompted by the site) to try to invite inactive users back after as soon as 1 day of inactivity. This is likely to force FOMO, or make users feel more like they owe the bots a response. Unhealthy attachment stuff.

Account deletion is an essential part of every service that should go smoothly, right? Right? Wrong. It takes 1-2 weeks for a Character AI account deletion to be finalized, and account deletion requests have a high chance to not go through if you're not using the app.

Rephrasing: People leaving Character.AI are pushed to download the app in order to delete their accounts, if they haven't already. This makes it harder for people to quit and stay gone. Failing to quit an addiction makes it harder to quit successfully in the future, so this feels like a feature, not a bug. On top of that, the delete account menu reads like this:

padmé; from padma, or lotus flower, another name/symbol of the hindu goddess lakshmi

pooja; (padmé’s niece) means ‘prayer’ or ‘an act of worship’, usually associated with hinduism

ahsoka; most likely inspired by the indian emperor ashoka

aayla; a turkish muslim name which means ‘a ring of light around the moon’

barriss; turkish in origin, means “peace”

smhi; most likely a form of the name lakshmi, a hindu goddess

shaak ti; from the name ‘shakti’, an Indian name which means “energy”

depa; obviously from the words ‘deepa’ which means “light/lamp”

yoda; possibly from the punjabi word ‘yoddha’, which means “warrior”

jamillia; from ‘jamilla/jameela’, a Muslim name which means “beautiful”

tatooine (planet); literally an actual city in tunisia

mustafar (planet); from the arabic word 'mustafa’, meaning “chosen one”. note the symbolism that darth vader made it his home

jedi; from the arabic 'al-jeddi’, meaning “master of the mystic warrior way”

•vader; Dutch for “father” and German ‘Vater’ also meaning “father”

•naberrie; alternate spelling of Egyptian ‘Nabirye’ meaning “Mother of Twins”

•amidala; of Italian origin meaning “beautiful flower” and also a derivative of ‘Amitabha’ in Buddhism. In Sanskrit it means “Infinite Light” but it has other variants such as Amitayus (meaning “Infinite Life”), Japanese ‘Amida’, Chinese ‘Emituo Fo’.

•luke; from Lucas and multiple origins such as French (meaning Light/laidback), Latin (meaning “Bringer of Light”), Greek (a patron saint) and in English (“the bringer of light”)

•leia; multiple origins such as Hebrew (meaning “weary” but also “child of heaven” and “heavenly flowers”), Assyrian (meaning “mistress”), Latin (meaning “lioness”)

•gungan; derived from ‘Gunga’, one of the seven holy rivers in India

•mandalore; from Sanskrit ‘Mandala’ meaning “circle” and is a spiritual symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism

•rishi maze; a ‘Rishi’ is a Hindu sage or saint

•sabé or tsabin; possibly a derivative of the Arabic name ‘Sabeen’ which has multiple meanings

•ryoo; (Padmé’s other niece) variant of ‘Ryu’ which is of Japanese origin meaning “dragon”

•sheev (palpatine); from ‘Shiva’ - the Hindu god of destruction and transformation

•réillata; possibly from the Sanskrit name ‘Lata’ meaning “creeper/vine”

•ruwee; (Padmé’s father) from Arabic name ‘Ruhee’ meaning “soul”

•jobal; (Padmé’s mother) possibly from Hebrew ‘Jubal’ which has multiple meanings such as “stream”

•dooku; from Japanese ‘Doku’ meaning “poison”

•saché or sashah; possibly a variant of Russian ‘Sasha’ meaning “defender”, Japanese ‘Sachi’ meaning “blissful/fortunate’ or Indian “Sachi’ meaning “child of wisdom/joy/happiness”

•yané or suyan; from Sanskrit name ‘Suyan’

•rabé or rabene; possibly derived from Sanskrit word ‘Ravi’ meaning “the sun”

•han; originated from many cultures (Chinese, Korean, Dutch, German, Scandinavian, Hebrew)

•chewbacca; from Russian ‘Sobaka’ meaning “dog”

•qui-gon jinn; from ‘qi-gong’ meaning “life force” and also a Chinese martial art that involves meditation and controlled exercises. Arabic ‘jinn’ meaning “genie” or spirits in Islamic mythology

•obi-wan kenobi; multiple meanings such as Japanese (a karate or kimono belt), African (meaning heart) and Swahili (meaning soul)

•breha; possibly from Indian/Urdu name ‘Breeha’ meaning “The most beautiful”

It’s like Obi-Wan thinks that it was on the Malevolence that Anakin became a Sith, like he just chose, entirely without duress, to go do that. That Anakin was a Sith all along! For all or RotS!

Padme’s reaction is honestly much more sensible: Anakin wouldn’t do that. I can’t believe that. Anakin cares too much to do something like that unless something horrible has happened. There must be more to this story than Palpatine offered him an apprenticeship and he took it.

People come down so hard on her, but I think Obi-Wan is the crazy one here. Padme’s right to be horrified “you’re going to kill him.” Without even talking to him? Without even finding out what went wrong? Why he’s actually doing this?

This post is nearly ten years old and I still think about this, honestly. Luke has no consciousness of the dangers and pressures in Leia’s life when he’s playing with his toy starship; she’s already had to become what he can only vaguely dream of. But she’s also never had to consider “where is tomorrow’s food and water coming from” to anything like the degree that Luke, Owen, and Beru do every day. Luke and Leia both make sure they’re armed when they leave home because their environments are so dangerous, in completely different ways.