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Blood is thicker than water The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

I don’t care if your comment is coherent. I know what you mean and i love you

I don’t care if you ramble. I read every word and i love you

I don’t care if you leave a comment on a fic from four years ago or leave comments/kudos on like ten of my fics in one go. This isn’t IG, pls stalk my AO3. I love you

I don’t care if you mention the same thing in your comment that four other people have already mentioned. It’s actually really useful to know what resonated with people and I love everyone who takes the time to tell me they liked a particular turn of phrase

I don’t mind if your comment is super long or just a couple of sentences, i love them all

I was cruising through the net, following the cold trail of one of the periodic “Is or is not Fanfic the Ultimate Literary Evil?” arguments that crop up regularly, and I’m now bursting to make a point that I never see made by fic defenders.

We’re all familiar with the normal defenses of fic: it’s done out of love, it’s training, it’s for fun. Those are all good and valid defenses!

But they miss something. They damn with faint praise. Because the thing is, when you commit this particular Ultimate Literary Evil you’ve now told a story. And stories are powerful. The fact that it wasn’t in an original world or with original characters doesn’t necessarily make it less powerful to any given reader.

I would never have made this argument a few years ago. A few years ago I hadn’t received messages from people who were deeply touched by something I wrote in fanfic. So what if it’s only two or three or four people, and I used someone else’s world and characters? For those two or three or four people, I wrote something fucking important. You cannot tell me that isn’t a valid use of my time and expect me to feel chastened. I don’t buy it. I won’t feel ashamed. I will laugh when you call something that touches other people ‘literary masturbation.’ Apparently you’re not too up on your sex terminology.

Stories are like swords. Even if you’ve borrowed the sword, even if you didn’t forge it yourself from ore and fire, it’s still your body and your skill that makes use of it. It can still draw blood, it can strike down things that attack you, it can still defend something you hold dear. Don’t get me wrong, a sword you’ve made yourself is powerful. You know it down to its very molecules, are intimate with its heft and its reach. It is part of your own arm. But that can make you hesitate to use it sometimes, if you’re afraid that swinging it too recklessly will notch the blade. Is it strong enough, you think. Will it stand this? I worked so hard to make it. A blade you snatched up because you needed a weapon in your hand is not prey to such fears. You will use it to beat against your foes until it either saves you or it shatters.

That’s not fic yet, but it is a story.

But the best stories grow. This can happen in the language of capitalism—a remake of a classic movie, a series of books focusing on what happened afterwards or before—or it can happen in the language of humanity. Children playing with sticks as lightsabers, Jedi Princess Leia saving Alderaan by dueling Vader; a father reading his kids The Hobbit as a bedtime story as an interactive, “what would you like to happen next?” way so that the dwarves win the wargs over with doggie biscuits that they had in their pockets and ride to Erebor on giant wolves, people writing and sharing their ideas for deleted outtake scenes from Star Trek and slow-build fierce and tender romance with startling bursts of hot sex between Hawkeye and Agent Coulson.

A story at its most successful is a fully developed fractal, retold a million times and a million ways, with stories based on stories based on stories. Fanfic of fanfic of fanfic. Stories based on headcanons, stories based on prompts, stories that put the Guardians of the Galaxy in a coffee-shop AU and stories where the Transformers are planet-wandering nomads and stories where characters from one story are placed into a world from another. Stories that could be canon, stories that are the farthest thing from canon, stories that are plausible, stories that would never happen, stories that give depth to a character or explore the consequences of one different plot event or rewrite the whole thing from scratch.

This is what stories are supposed to be.

Literature was once a communal act, too. Film as well. It’s only once we decided to extend and expand the idea of copyright and turn stories into primarily vehicles for profit that we rejected this communal structure. The literary canon shouldn’t be all dead white men. They didn’t build the novel. They didn’t build theater. They took what was already there and said “This is mine now,” and we believed them.

Creativity is communal. There is no such thing as the lone genius on a mountaintop. Ideas are passed around, handed back and forth, growing all the time. Fandom is what human creativity looks like in its normal form. Fandom is like this because humans are like this.

me, crying: please… please just fucking process the words on the paper

I've never seen anyone talk about them flinching??

Fox is behind glass and he flinches, ya'll, this scene really shows a fragment of the broken reality of being a clone.

If Anakin really wanted to see Ahsoka, he could very easily kill them, without hesitation, he could shatter that glass and hurt them. It doesn't matter that they're trained for combat, these boys are under the Jedis' command, especially Anakin, you guys all know that this boy is capable of serious damage.

In order for a trained command ranking clone like Fox to flinch, he has to have been on the receiving end of something seriously harsh and messed up repeatedly.

He fucking flinched! This goes beyond that finger wag and tone of voice Anakin gave him. Someone has him conditioned. So his flinch is the result of a learned behavior that he associates with a harsh punishment everytime he sees someone trying to pull rank on him or overpower him.

Fox, who has been conditioned since birth to not show weakness, just openly showed it. Maybe it was a subconscious act to show his submission and that he's not a threat. Maybe he just slipped up and flinched because while he expected threats and disappointment from the Chancellor or his handler, he never expect that from Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin was the type of general who knew all his soldier by name, not just number. He encouraged all his men to be individuals and think outside the box; that they were more that just a rank in an army, they were people.

So you can imagine how incredibly small and weak Fox must have felt in that moment. Skywalker looming over him and threatening him, all because he was doing his job to the best of his abilities- which is something Anakin would encourage in any if his own men.

Can you imagine how confused, and scared, and trapped Fox has felt this entire time? How he can't rely in anyone but himself and the men under his command?

He doesn't have brothers, he has soldiers. He doesn't have any of the connections and comforts that the other commanders have. He only has himself and an abusive relationship where someone clearly has power over him.

TL;DR:

But the thing about the ‘they’re not fighting slavery!’ argument always gets me because, like, there are roughly ten thousand Jedi. That’s the firmest number we have on the Jedi Order around the time before the clone wars. Some of those Jedi are simply not going to be suited to going up against slavers. Some of them are kids, some of them are elderly, some of them aren’t very good at fighting. So that’s probably a maximum of, what, six thousand field-ready Jedi?

Take a moment to look at that number. Six thousand. That is a low, LOW number of people, if you’re asking them to go out into the Outer Rim (which is where a lot of slavery is happening), to several dozen or perhaps even several HUNDRED planets, to go…what? Kill slavers? Free slaves? And then what?

Now you have thousands or tens of thousands of traumatized people that you are responsible for. The Jedi don’t have the kind of money available to set up tens of thousands of people with trauma care, food, education, housing - because here’s the thing, some of those slaves are going to be second or third generation slaves. You can’t just free people and go ‘you’re free!’ and then walk away. If you care about those people, you need to help them learn how to live as free people. So do the Jedi do it themselves and tie up all their resources that way? Do they ask a planetary ruler they know personally to take all these people? Do they try to house them in the temple? How would the Senate feel about the Jedi cozying up to one particular planetary ruler and taking favours from them?

But what about the Hutts? Won’t the Hutt clans just pay more people to become slavers? So should the Jedi kill all the Hutts? Well then the other crime cartels will fill that void - the Black Sun and such. Should the Jedi kill all of them?

What exactly do people mean when they say the Jedi should be freeing slaves? What process do they envision? Jedi shock-troops marching into Jabba’s Palace, and the headquarters of all the other Hutts and crime syndicates?

Should they leave a trail of corpses in their wake? Should they kill all the children of the people running the cartels? Should they kill Rotta as well as Jabba? Where is the cutoff? Everyone over 21? anyone over 17? Anyone involved in the slavery aspect of the cartels in any way? What about spouses - they knew what their spouse was doing, should the Jedi kill them as well? Or should the Jedi leave them alive, so that their resentment and hatred of the Jedi murderers can grow into open opposition?

And if you think the Jedi could take down the Hutt cartels without a bodycount, then I have a bridge to sell you. There would absolutely be a bodycount. And why would the Hutts not use their slaves to protect themselves? Use the slaves to fight the Jedi - maybe promise them that if they can kill a Jedi, they’ll be freed, or be given a lot of money, or maybe they’d threaten people’s families to make them fight. Or just, y’know, pay them. Should the Jedi cut down all the slaves and mercenaries and cannon fodder the syndicates would send against them?

Should the Jedi become bloody warlords? No?

Then how exactly do people propose they end slavery? Here’s a radical notion - maybe by spreading peace and prosperity by arbitrating disputes between planets so that those planets can get back to co-operating and have less chaos that might allow slavers and pirates to take advantage of intra- or inter-system conflict to pull slave runs. And systems that are more prosperous have more attention and money to spend fighting slavers themselves. Parents who can afford to put food on the table are less likely to sell their children into slavery.

And here’s the thing. Some Jedi ARE out there tracking down slavery rings. Siri Tachi anyone? Tholme and Aayla? and that’s only the ones we know about. And in TCW we are explicitly told that the Jedi being busy with the war means that the crime syndicates are flourishing because the Jedi’s attention is elsewhere. The Zygerrians are getting up to their old tricks BECAUSE THE JEDI ARE BUSY WITH THE WAR. I  just. HOW? HOW DO PEOPLE NOT SEE THE COROLLARY?

Before the war, the Jedi WERE keeping the crime cartels in check. They WERE keeping things from getting worse, and trying to make things better, but they only have TEN THOUSAND PEOPLE, MAX (counting children, elderly, etc), for THE ENTIRE REPUBLIC NOT TO MENTION THE OUTER RIM AREAS OUTSIDE IT.

But Pop Culture Detective put all this far more articulately than I can. Fuck the Jedi, fuck the toxic masculinity that equates the expression of emotion with weakness or evil, and fuck all systems that suggest “good” and “evil” are binary forces.

The Jedi don’t really do any of those things though? While many Jedi are reserved in their emotional expression, and I can agree with Pop Culture Detective about how that can play into real world patterns, he also heavily misunderstands core things about the Jedi and the Force. 

To start with, the Jedi do not ban emotions. We see even very quintessential Jedi show emotions all over the place. What they speak of is controlling them, because things can go really bad when trained force-sensitives loose control. Controlling your emotions is not the same as not feeling them. That Jedi Code people talk about at times is from a 1980′s roleplaying book and not a central part of the worldbuilding. To the extent that it has been picked up in higher levels of canon it’s as a meditation mantra.  Anakin wasn’t prevented from expressing his feelings as a Jedi, he was told to control them. The problem was that Palpatine was dripping poison in his ear.

The “dark side” and “light side” isn’t really Good and Evil as much as they are Selfishness and Selflessness. I’m gonna use a Lucas quote, where he talks about how the force works, to show what I mean:

“The core of the Force–I mean, you got the dark side, the light side, one is selfless, one is selfish, and you wanna keep them in balance. What happens when you go to the dark side is it goes out of balance and you get really selfish and you forget about everybody … because when you get selfish you get stuff, or you want stuff, and when you want stuff and you get stuff then you are afraid somebody is going to take it away from you, whether it’s a person or a thing or a particular pleasure or experience. “Once you become afraid that somebody’s going to take it away from you or you’re gonna lose it, then you start to become angry, especially if you’re losing it, and that anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. Mostly on the part of the person who’s selfish, because you spend all your time being afraid of losing everything you’ve got instead of actually living. “Where joy, by giving to other people you can’t think about yourself, and therefore there’s no pain. But the pleasure factor of greed and of selfishness is a short-lived experience, therefore you’re constantly trying to replenish it, but of course the more you replenish it, the harder it is to, so you have to keep upping the ante. You’re actually afraid of the pain of not having the joy.”  –George Lucas, The Clone Wars writers meeting

The Dark side is selfishness, and that fear->anger->hate->suffering path Yoda speaks of is literally how Lucas describes the force working. It’s a core of the Star Wars world-building. 

This also plays into how attachment as the Jedi define it is not the same things as love. It’s not the same attachment that we use colloquially or the attachment of attachment theory. It is brought up in connection to possessive relationships, obsession, greed and an inability to let go when time comes. I’m gonna bring in some Lucas quotes to explain further:

“No human can let go,” Lucas would say of [the Yoda-Anakin scene]. “It’s very hard. Ultimately, we do let go because it’s inevitable; you do die and you do lose your loved ones. But while you’re alive, you can’t be obsessed with holding on. As Yoda says in this one, ‘You must learn to let go of everything you’re afraid to let go of.’ Because holding on is in the same category and the precursor to greed. And that’s what a Sith is. A Sith is somebody that is absolutely obsessed with gaining more and more power - but for what? Nothing, except that it becomes an obsession to get more.” 

“The Jedi are trained to let go. They’re trained from birth,” he continues, “They’re not supposed to form attachments. They can love people- in fact, they should love everybody. They should love their enemies; they should love the Sith. But they can’t form attachments. So what all these movies are about is: greed. Greed is a source of pain and suffering for everybody. And the ultimate state of greed is the desire to cheat death.”- The Making of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, page 213

“Jedi Knights aren’t celibate - the thing that is forbidden is attachments - and possessive relationships.”  –George Lucas, BBC News 2002 interview

“He turns into Darth Vader because he gets attached to things. He can’t let go of his mother; he can’t let go of his girlfriend. He can’t let go of things. It makes you greedy. And when you’re greedy, you are on the path to the dark side, because you fear you’re going to lose things, that you’re not going to have the power you need.” –George Lucas, Time Magazine 2002 interview

We also see this expressed in-universe. In “Rise of Clovis” when Obi-Wan goes to see Anakin to try and talk to him, he brings up his feelings for Satine and says “It’s not that we are not allowed to have these feeling. It’s natural.” We have also seen Obi-Wan say that Jedi are forbidden attachments. So, once again, these two concepts being the same thing wouldn’t really make sense. Loving someone is not the same as being attached to them in Jedi jargon. To what extent attachment and love overlaps it’s with attachment as selfish love. What the Jedi instead value, and hold as central to their life style is compassion, selfless love that’s about the other person rather than your own feelings for them. Them not getting married might be just as much about commitment to the order and a need for neutrality as anything else. 

Attachment, the driving force behind Anakin’s fall, is very much presented as being a bad thing, both by Lucas in commentaries and the narrative of the movies. Anakin is attached to his mother, unable to let her go, so the loss of her drives him to a horrible massacre, where he kills not only those responsible for her death but also innocent children. Attachment is what makes him join Sidious. He couldn’t bear the pain of losing Padmé, but it wasn’t about what Padmé wanted but rather his own emotions. I cannot see Padmé agreeing to a genocide just so she can stay alive. Anakin’s love for her turned selfish. Sidious didn’t trick Anakin with promises of letting him feel, Anakin wanted a way to stop death!

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones commentary track, George Lucas:  “The key part of this scene ultimately is Anakin saying “I’m not going to let this happen again.” We’re cementing his determination to become the most powerful Jedi. The only way you can really do that is to go to the Dark Side because the Dark Side is more powerful. If you want the ultimate power you really have to go to the stronger side which is the Dark Side, but ultimately it would be your undoing. But it’s that need for power and the need for power in order to satisfy your greed to keep things and to not let go of things and to allow the natural course of life to go on, which is that things come and go, and to be able to accept the changes that happen around you and not want to keep moments forever frozen in time.“ 

Honestly, I am so surprised when people try to connect the Jedi to Christianity and the West’s philosophy when Lucas and other people have talked about how he was inspired by Japanese movies. Why does this fact flies over people’s head?

There are fundumental things in the East and the West that are just different. It doesn’t make sense when you try and relate it.

East religions and philosophies emphasies more on how a person can better themselves so they can be in harmony in nature and other people. Striving to be better in their day to day lives. Sounds familiar?

They also don’t have “one ruler” of your fate. You make your own fate. Of course there are “spirits” who can help you but you make your own choices. No one is going to send you to “good"or the “bad” place. You can reach a Nirvana, be rebirthed, be rewarded in some sort of way or punished by Karma, which basically “emphasizes the responsibility of a person to decide his happiness through his actions, which have the power to change his destiny.”

“Man, the subject, should gain mastery over man, the object”, (Ho 1995) gaining control over the “Self”, releasing the individual of pain and suffering and thus tending to eternal happiness. ”

This all relates to the Jedi and how they see and use the Force in their daily lives. If you can’t see it - what have you been all watching?

You can find talks about emotional intelligence in Hinduism and a story about two cousins who fight each other. And one of them has mastered how to deal with emotions , the other not so much. So from this story come out some words that are quite familiar to the Jedi’s own teachings.

“Thinking of objects, attachment to them is formed in a man. From attachment longing, and from longing anger grows.

“From anger comes delusion, and from delusion loss of memory. From loss of memory comes the ruin of discrimination, and from the ruin of discrimination, he perishes.”

“He whose mind is not shaken by adversity, who does not hanker after happiness, who has become free from affection, fear, and wrath, is indeed the Muni of steady wisdom.

“He who is everywhere unattached, not pleased at receiving good, nor vexed at evil, his wisdom is fixed.

“When also, like the tortoise drawing its limbs, he can completely withdraw the senses from their objects, then his wisdom becomes steady.”

“Bhagavad-Gita(Hindu script) is considered an authority not only to identify the nature of emotions, but also to show a way out of the darkness of emotional instability, in the form of a dialogue between emotional disturbance (Aijuna) and the universal master (Krishna), and remains an irrefutable answer to many dilemmas or confusions of modern man.”

The Eastern people often think of the spirit of the community rather than the individualistic approach which I personally find harder to relate to and probably a lot of other people too. People in the West are often praised of their accomplishment as individuals and also praise people that stand out from the crowd, when it’s in a positive light. We often see people who follow the crowd as mindless sheeps and like to critisize them for not being “authentic” enough or thinking for themselves. While it may be true in some cases relying on collectivism can be very helpful. Collectivism is what helps us when we are trying to fight for our rights, it helps us when a group of people try and achieve a goal that could help humanity, Earth or etc. In times like these if a person wants just to show off as individual what good does that do.

“According to Bhagavad Gita, selfless service for a good cause and for others, with the right feeling and attitude, is a form of worship and spirituality.”

“According to James Lochtefeld, Karma yoga is the spiritual practice of “selfless action performed for the benefit of others.”

Again you can easily connect that with the Jedi. Because they try and strive for collectivism of some sort they are able to help people without bringing up the “I” in everything. Like “what about me? What about my emotions? What about my dreams and aspirations?”. It’s very easy, you just walk away. No one is holding you back to do whatever you want with your life. This is a way of life, not a cult.

You can read so much stuff ,easily on the internet, about Jedi’s inspiration and stop listening to “sources” that just put their own emotional and philosohical views. There is NOTHING bad if you don’t like that way of thinking. But just because you don’t find it appealing doesn’t mean other people don’t so don’t label them “cult appologist” or some other shit like that.

Here is a compilation of places to donate (IF you can, simply reblogging and sharing this can help) and petition to sign. I found these websites and organizations on twitter.

DONATIONS

THE MINNESOTA  FREEDOM FUND: Donate to this to collect funds to pay jail bonds for the protesters who get arrested.

BLACK LIVES MATTER: An organization fighting for the BLM movement. Donate if you can. 

BLACK VISIONS MN: an organization that is led by Black, Queer and Trans people. Donate if you can.

NAACP Legal Defense Fund: Fights for the overall equality fight. Donate if you can.

PETITIONS

Willie Simmons has spent 38 years in prison for a $9 robbery. He had two prior convictions similar to robbery that he served time for. He was prosecuted under the Alabama Habitual Offender law and was given a life sentence for his third strike - stealing 9 (NINE) dollars. Sign his petition. 

Breonna Taylor was killed by police who were conducting an UNANNOUNCED drug raid, where they gave no request to enter. They bashed her door and entered, shooting her EIGHT times. They were in the WRONG HOUSE. 

George Floyd was killed by a police officer who knelt on his neck and suffocated him to death, after George pleaded with the officer and told him he couldn’t breathe. The officer had pulled him from where he sat in his car on an alleged FORGERY. You can also text “FLOYD” to 55156

ARREST THE OFFICERS WHO KILLED GEORGE FLOYD: The main police officer who murdered George is being kept in PROTECTIVE CUSTODY. You probably have heard he was arrested, but this is NOT TRUE. He was placed under PROTECTIVE custody because of the riots and “threats” on his life. 

northstar health collective, organized healthcare professionals working with anti-authoritarian groups

reclaim the block, a collective that aims to redistribute funding away from police and towards more community-oriented projects in minneapolis

these are the links i send to my facebook friends who keep running their mouths about “the protests hurting the community”

minnehaha food shelf & calvary church food shelf are both centered in the south minneapolis area where the riots started. the grocery stores in the area have been decimated, so food shelves and food insecurity charities need a lot of love right now.

northside funders group is a philanthropic group in the twin cities that’s using all its funds right now for helping local businesses

migizi is a native american media/history nonprofit whose office was destroyed in the riots

we love lake street is devoting funds specifically towards rebuilding the lake street area in south minneapolis

some more groups that could use your help

the healing justice foundation is a national nonprofit that’s specifically focusing on mental health resources for bipoc right now

ctul is a nonprofit focused on low-wage workers and workers rights in minnesota

mpd 150 is focused on policing and specifically trying to reroute the conversation from “we need to change police procedures” to “the police need structural reform”

the spiral collective is providing funds for supplies, medic kits, and other things that protesters will need on the ground

unicorn riot is a media collective that has had people on the ground filming every night in minneapolis

last but not least some more bail funds

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houston

las vegas

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louisville

massachusetts

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