#grumping

And like, I want that too. I like the aesthetic of the Sith (well, half of them. it's hilarious how like half the Sith have the best aesthetic and the other half have the worst. Palpatine, wear something other than an old bathrobe!) and I have several issues with the Jedi and some of the more conventional (in-universe) interpretations of their teachings. I think there are actually some good ideas contained within Sith Philosophy... though you do have to set aside a lot of awful to get there. (More on that later, still cooking up a post about the Sith Code).

So yeah, I get it. I get looking at the Jedi and their flaws and wishing the Sith could be a more viable option. I get looking at the handful of functional Sith that exist and go 'the whole group *could* be like that. I get the desire to look at the way the Light Side seems to work sometimes, and the basic description of the Dark Side and thinking, on the surface, it can't be that bad. And even... arguably, it isn't. On the surface.

I get it. I get wanting not evil or not psycho, etc Sith. I get this desire to imagine a version of the Sith that are just pragmatic jedi who like the color black and use better looking lightsabers (Red Sabers > Blue or Green, fite me) but...

They just don't really exist. The Dark Side is space crack. The force is an emotional feedback machine. The sith have so many atrocities to their name that anyone who willingly associates with the label is deciding they're okay with that.

You can have functional Sith. You can even have people who dip into the dark side and aren't be evil about it or not super evil.

"This 22 year old woman made a pass at the 14 year old hero in one scene, that must mean she's attracted to him!"

You mean the villainess with a proven track record of feigning relationships to control other people, such that the starter villain is comically obsessed with her despite we, the audience, knowing full well she's using him as an expendable pawn.

In the scene where this interaction is textually called out as 'weird' and the moment the hero is snapped from the disorientation caused by her presence (psychic as well as physical), he books it without a second thought, to her quite considerable irritation.

In the show chock full of older characters exploiting younger ones for their own selfish gain, which never has her interact with the hero like this again, and in fact ends with her engaging him in a philosophical debate that essentially boils to 'damn you for still having optimism about the future and the will to build a better world.'

Gee. I wonder what possible alternate interpretations there could be for these events?

I know Gundam can be icky about this stuff on occasion and we all like to read the newtype stuff as sexually as possible but ZZ is not remotely subtle about the reasons for Haman's growing obsession, and it sure as hell isn't that kind of attraction. I'm profoundly irritated by the way the wiki presents Haman being romantically attracted to Judau as something gestured at by the text when . . . no? Haman is an arch-manipulator who wants to control literally everyone and everything around her. Kissing him is Plan A [and I will grant, you can read a ton into it regarding her and Char, if you want the really messy stuff] and it doesn't work. Thereafter she defaults to treating Judau as the unruly child he is and the actual, stated lines of their conflict are so much more interesting as a result.