Sunshine Likes Star Wars

So I read this post the other day that suggested Satine’s period of rule was just a blip in Mandalore’s history, that she only maintained power because she’d won it in battle, and that Mandalorians were glad to return to their traditionalist ways and… it just really irked me.

Because that’s not true at all??

Satine came to power because of an insanely brutal civil war. Satine was there as she watched her kin tear each other apart, and that destructive violence is exactly why she's such a staunch passivist. It's quite literally what she lived through that shaped her ideals and made her want a different future for Mandalore.

And a ruler of a warrior culture being a pacifist because of the violence she witnessed is such an interesting basis for a character. Satine has such an interesting perspective as a Mandalorian, and I hate how much the fanbase casts her aside or demonizes her. With how brutal the Mandalorians were stated to be, it's only natural some people would want to move toward peace.

“ The heart of this humdinger question is that the word “attachment” means one thing in the context of parenting and another in the context of Buddhist teachings. The association of the word “attachment” with parenting has its origins in the phrase “attachment parenting”, a theory of child-rearing developed by pediatrician William Sears in the 1980s. In parenting, attachment is thought to provide a foundational sense of safety and security, giving a child the courage to explore and thus learn essential facts about their world. Your concern for your children’s well-being and safety comes from a healthy, natural bonding derived from empathy, care, and love – none of which are against the dharma.

In the Buddhist world, attachment is understood as a mental factor, a psychological pattern that is a mega-cause of suffering. However, the neutral sense of the English word “attachment” doesn’t convey the potency and misery of what Buddhists mean by it. Buddhist texts use the Sanskrit word trsna, an English-language cognate of which is the word “thirst”. “Thirst” accurately conveys the sense of need that characterizes this mental state. We are thirsty for sense gratification, thirsty for experiences. Other translations of this kind of attachment are “clinging”, “craving”, and “desire”. Although it doesn’t sound human to say, “Don’t be attached to your children,” it does sound right to say, “Don’t cling to them.” (We even disapprove of overly clingy parents.) 

Nonetheless, the Buddhist notion of attachment, as craving, can teach us something about parenting pitfalls. Since we can crave just about anything, it’s possible to develop a sticky clinginess to our own children. For example, we might crave their demonstrations of affection, respect, or loyalty. We can become attached to our children behaving or performing in a particular way, believing that our child should be a good soccer player, academically successful, polite to others, and so on, because we are worried about our own public image, self-worth, unresolved issues, or value as a “good” parent. This kind of attachment is primarily self-centered, serving our own needs. As many of us know from experience, staking our happiness on a child fulfilling our expectations invariably results in suffering. (Although I’m quite certain that the moment my children stop leaving dirty socks around the house, my life will be perfect.) In the final analysis of this type of clingy attachment, it’s not so much that we are directly attached to our children as we are attached to our misconception of what will bring us happiness. 

Imagine you like lord of the rings and you decide to look around the fandom.

And it turns out that 10+ or something years ago someone wrote a piece of fanfiction where they rewrote the rules for the ring. So instead of it only having one master and corrupting everyone else that tried to use it, it sometimes chooses to take a new master if it feels the person is worthy of it. And therefore this author’s self-insert OC can now use the one ring in all its glory without getting turned crazy.

This fanfic gets published (as some fanfics do) and most of the fandom has read it and loves it.

Now, when you (someone who has only dealt with canon works written by Tolkien) see this fic you go… huh. That’s nice, but it goes against the very point of the books and the lore tolkien created. So while it’s a good fic I’m not going to interact with it.

But then people keep harassing you for taking about/ writing the one ring the way tolkien wrote it to begin with.

And they SWEAR that this is the Actual lore of the one ring, and that YOU are wrong. Which is completely insane to you, because FRODE TOOK IT TO MORDOR FOR A REASON. There is only one lord of the ring!! That’s literally the name of the series that’s what it’s about!! If what the fandom was insisting about was possible, there would be no plot. In the original books.

This is why we are so upset over gray jedi!! Bc if it was possible to use the dark side but still be a good guy then wtf is wrong with Anakin? Why the fuck did Darth Vader fall to the dark side? Why did Luke struggle so much? If you can have your cake and eat it too why are the movies so fuckin long?? Why did Luke fail against Vader in Empire? what lesson did he learn in Return? Why would the movie be called Return of the Jedi if Luke had not learned the Jedi ways????

So I really don’t understand all this anti Jedi nonsense and this idea that we need to be super critical about them and blame them, because apparently the villains / antagonists deserve to be put on a pedestal and excused for everything they do (*cough* murder, genocide, slavery, etc.) because they sad at times with a at times sad backstory.

And the fact that even writers within Star Wars feel like that, instead of taking the Jedi as they are and have always been meant to be perceived as, is so saddening.

It doesn’t take long to take the time, especially as a writer, and look into the Jedi's origins and what GL wanted to tell with his story, especially in terms of evil and good and the concept of balance and being in control of yourself specifically your darkest and most negative characteristics and emotions.