Brain rats on the fandom wheel

you're owen lars. the woman you call mom had another child once. it doesn't make her love you less, but she talks about him in a way that makes it clear that she loved him, too. he's off to be a jedi now and she's very proud.

you're owen lars. your mother's been kidnapped and you have to assume the worst. a man and a woman step into your home and the man announces himself to be that kid who went off to become a jedi. he knows you less than you know him and before anything else can happen, he takes off to bring back his mother, a feat you think is impossible.

you're owen lars. anakin skywalker brings your mom's corpse to your doorstep. her funeral is interrupted by a message of utmost galactic importance.

you're owen lars. your brother is dead. you never saw him again after that first time. there is another jedi on your doorstep, with a baby in his arm and you know what it means and you can't bring yourself to face him as he hands your nephew off to your wife.

you're owen lars. obi-wan ben kenobi is a pain in the ass. he was more your brother's brother than you ever were and he doesn't understand your particular kind of grief, is drowning in his own. you don't even know the full story and kenobi will never tell you all of it. but you have a child to care for so you tell him off and get back to work.

you're owen lars. you didn't know your brother, but you know your nephew and your nephew wants out of this place as soon as possible. you know he won't be safe out there but in the end you're helpless to stop him. and you know the stories, you remember the one time you met him, the days your mother died. and you do this for her and you do this for your father and you do this for your brother and you do this for your nephew.

via http://imgur.com/gallery/x5mE5

Me when I contact IT and tell them yes I restarted and followed any instructions I could but computer still angry and IT says they are escalating this because it is an actual issue: I am getting a good grade in service desk ticket. Something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve.

but if you're like "this is relevant to your own current behavior" with the implication that the intracommunity thing they're currently big mad about is actually not as important and righteous as they're casting it in their head, it's like "no no. not MY behavior. mine is rational and I am correct. the issue I am fighting with other queer people about like rats in a sack IS actually the most important issue to be addressing right now"

and like

this is stuff I have to constantly watch out for in my own behavior! it is absolutely absolutely a thing, and absolutely something we ALL deal with and are capable of engaging in. it's ramped up in intensity the last year or two and I don't think that is a coincidence. I wish we were more capable of this level of analysis of this stuff without getting defensive.

Peter Pan edited by Anne Hiebert Alton (2011)

(sorry to interrupt joke post but) this is true!

Children not clapping did happen too, (and some were even expected to have hissed, which was later written into the 1928 playscript and 1911 novel). But my all time favourite anecdote about it is from Pauline Chase (who played Peter)'s intro to Peter Pan's Post Bag 1909:

Children love to clap their hands at the play because then they feel that they are really part of it, and you can see them holding their hands poised ready to seize an opportunity. Their great chance is when I ask them to clap their hands if they believe in fairies, and so save Tink's life. But they are very wrathful if any one claps who has the reputation of being a cynic, and once there was quite an uproar in the front row of the dress circle because of a girl who clapped. Those about her pulled down her arms angrily. "How dare you clap," they cried, "when you know you don't believe in fairies!" There was one dreadfully hard-hearted little boy who came to the theatre not to clap. That was his object for coming, and he came round "behind" to tell me so in the middle of the play. His teeth were firm set. "I won't clap," he said doggedly; "I'm not going to clap." And when the time came he didn't clap; above the clapping of all the others I could hear him shouting from a box, "Peter, I'm not clapping."

I remember an Expanded Universe comic set immediately after RotJ where Leia tells Luke words to the effect of "Vader literally had me tortured and blew up my homeworld. What, am I supposed to feel kinship with him just because I discovered he's my dad yesterday?"

The important thing that happens in Return of the Jedi is that the Emperor dies and the planet-killing superweapon gets blown up. Vader spent the last two hours of his life doing something good after 25 years of genocide, mass murder and torture, and even then, it was partly out of vengeful hatred. Vader fucking hated Palpatine for a quarter century and never had the spine to do anything about it. It was only after his own son was being tortured to death in front of him that he chose to act - and he'd cut off the kid's hand like two years before that! That's not a fucking redemption arc.

So one, yes, absolutely it is entirely correct to take issue with Darth Vader's apparent forgiveness by the Force, there is no need for Leia to accept him as her father or to feel anything for him besides hate and contempt, redemption takes more than turning back for a couple of hours and then getting out of culpability by dying, all fair.

That said: the original trilogy is Luke Skywalker's story and the story of Luke Skywalker, on a meta level, is about being a young adult in the 60s and 70s who did not experience WWII or the depths of fascism personally, but who grew up with gaping familial wounds - family members who you never knew but who older people refer to or talk around, people they compare you to, figures who other children had in their lives but you didn't. Someone who as a child was given fantasies of heroes fighting daring battles, who was told it was all about nationhood and fighting for your people and the course of civilization, someone who internalized those principles as guiding lights for their own morality and who they want to be... and THEN finding out when you become an adult, and are permitted to know about the horrors, that it is not just honor and glory in your heritage, that you, 70s white boy, may have evil and darkness and the corruption of all your values as a potential to fall into just as your father did, the temptation to hate and cruelty and domination and atrocity. And the absences in your family are maybe not just because of death, of noble sacrifice, but perhaps instead because those people who shared your blood became monsters, severed from their family because of their terrible actions, and still live as awful hateful versions of themselves, enslaved to evil, and that could be you.

And what do you do with that? Will you strike your father down with all of your hatred, when the thing that corrupted him by his hate for its own ends is sitting there grinning and laughing, waiting to do the same to you? Is violence the answer against that creature, infinitely better at taking advantage from violence than you are? Or will you just die - and even just walking away here means death, sooner or later - and let the evil persist?

Or will you, privileged young person with ideals and hopes, with a family member who has done terrible unforgivable things but who still holds affection for you, make use of that affection to tempt them to just turn their back on that evil for a moment, the thing it will never expect from the person it made its slave for longer than you've been alive? Neither you nor he can pay back the crimes of those years, but perhaps you can stop the evil, here and now, from going on.

So you do that. And what is your reward? Is it appropriate for Luke, whose whole story has been about becoming the ideal he grew up admiring and defeating the evil that ideal had the potential to become, both halves of it embodied in the being of his father, to come back to his friends and then have the universe say to him 'your father was unredeemable, and had nothing good enough in him to deserve peace in death'? Or to say there was a darkness lifted from him, and a light restored?

It doesn’t mean people will forgive you - hell no. The things Vader did were unforgivable, and he knew that. But because of that, he believed the only path left was to keep committing atrocities, to wallow in self-hatred and anger for decades and take it out on the galaxy. He says it himself: “It’s too late for me, son”.

But what Luke shows Vader is that we ALWAYS have a choice: To be a better person, and to choose compassion. Anakin doesn’t kill the Emperor out of hatred, or even because he thinks it’ll make up for anything he did: He knows nothing ever will. He chooses to save Luke, and break the cycle of violence because it’s the right, kind thing to do.

Vader/Anakin isn’t fully redeemed by the end of Return of the Jedi: He simply takes his first step back into the light. Obi-Wan and Yoda chose to give him that second chance, but that was their decision to make. The people you hurt are by NO means obligated to forgive you - but you should still strive to be better regardless.