Anakin Skywalker was 'greedy' in the sense that he was holding on to Padme so tightly that he was willing to do anything to save her. That's true.

He made the wrong choice. A lot of wrong choices, really.

But we can't ignore the fact that he'd been groomed by an evil space archmage for 14 years. We can't ignore that the visions themselves were at least influenced by Palpatine (because he knew they were happening to make his Plagueis story have an impact. One wonders what he would have used as leverage if Padme wasn't dying in visions - unless he was full on sending them). We can't ignore the role what happened to Shmi played in all this, and why that led him to be even more closed off about what was happening (since Obi-wan had been dismissive of the visions of her death, calling them merely dreams. I think Obi-wan would have taken these visions more seriously with the hindsight on Shmi's but I can see why Anakin didn't think so). We can't ignore that the force is an emotional feedback loop and yes that's part of the reason why the Jedi have their rules, but once you're feeling the fear and anxiety, etc, then yes, you're just gonna have it keep mounting up and 'just let it go' isn't exactly a great solution.

We can't ignore that Anakin had spent the last 3 years in a constant state of stress and danger and crisis and clearly not getting much sleep, I doubt he was eating right and he hadn't had a moment to actually gather himself in AGES.

None of this and any of the other factors excuses what he did. Not even close.

But to just dismiss it as 'Anakin was too attached' and 'Anakin was greedy' is -

It's bullshit. Anakin had to be put through the kind of emotional and mental wringer that would have killed almost anyone on this website to be brought to the brink, and he still hesitated up until that final choice.

None of what he did was justified, or okay, or mitigated to a degree that removes his culpability, his crime, the sheer monstrousness of what he did. But by any reasonable measure, Anakin was not operating under his full faculties.

In-universe, he deserved lifetime imprisonment in supersupermax (and I only say no to death penalty because I just don't like death penalty, but he would have deserved that too, to be honest) just for what happened in the first three minutes of into walking in the temple. One minute even, probably.

But Anakin is fictional. And we can acknowledge those mitigating factors and appreciate that it was complicated.

And simple, yes, but many things can be both.

Anakin's fictional. He didn't kill any actual people. And it's a tragedy because it's a tragedy. Anakin's tragic flaws were indeed the problem, but -

Context is important. Especially in a movie like RoTS, everything is there for a reason.

Always love it when people swing so far in ‘Imperialism by White Europeans in the New World Was Bad” (very true) rhetoric that they swing back around to the infantilization of the cultures of the Native Americans, which is exactly the same thing the White Europeans were doing.

There is this really fucking annoying elitism at the core of the Fallout Fandom, from those people who played 1 and 2 and thus feel like they understand everything so much more perfectly, their opinion of everything even stuff purely in later games is thus automatically right, and anyone who hasn't played the older games is just never gonna get it, never gonna understand the whole 'point' of the series, etc, etc.

And oh man, the way people just love to shit on Bethesda. Fucking Christ, people hate on Bethesda more than they love fidget spinners.

What happened to make conservatives with no reading comprehension decide to frequent my blog?

There’s really no indication that Wolfram and Hart actually had any real plan behind bringing Darla back. Like, apart from ‘mess with Angel’s mind’, it seems clear from 2x07′s final scene they weren’t expecting Darla to give him a happy, so what on earth was their plan? Bring on the mauve phase that we see later? That sure accomplished so much for them.

Wolfram and Hart never really seemed to have any plan for Angel, beyond fuck around and find out.

Is there anything more annoying than Tolkien stans going after GRRM?

Well, yes, but still.

I guess ultimately, my issue with the way some people emphasize that the Jedi code works and that the Jedi were doing really good and that they really didn't fail Anakin in any way (or at least not any way that can really lie in their fault), and the way the Order does things in the Prequels era is excellent and good overall is that -

In the Prequels, the Republic is broken. Republics don't collapse out of nowhere. Institutions don't just implode like the Republic's did for no reason. The Republic's fall was the result of generations of complacency, corruption, stultification, ossification, cutting short term deals, overreach, underaction - there's a reason so many people were onboard with the idea of an Empire at first, and it wasn't all just bribery, xenophobia and fear.

And I guess - I just can't accept that the Jedi were just humming along fine this whole time, without also turning inward too much, without also ossifying and becoming complacent. Because the Jedi were too bound up with the Republic for that to not be the case.

so, I read the full fanlore page for that whole ‘fandom ghost’ thing about m/m and the way there’s this one character that keeps being written into every character over and over, across pairings, inserted into a usually minor or underdeveloped character, etc

and there was a section on a female ghost that also tends to show up in a lot of these m/m fics, a smart, sassy, beautiful female character who is also reduced to being an enabler for the m/m ship, etc. 

And while I don’t really read m/m, that does track with my limited exposure.

BUT, I think there is also a fandom ghost in f/f fic too. I honestly don’t read the wider f/f widely enough to articulate it as much, just what’s in my fandoms and I don’t really have an expansive set of them or add new ones that easily.

BUT in my experience, and from what I see in summaries and tags on ao3 and posts here on tumblr, there is a common character archtype wedged into characters regardless of if they fit, across a lot of femmeslash stories.

I can’t give a solid point by point as I write this at 5 in the morning, coming off stewing over the thoughts in my sleep, or so it feels, but like:

the m/m fandom ghost is a type a personality, controlled and tsundere and hypercompetent and gets wrecked by the messy guy that comes in and destroys their carefully crafted life, etc.

The f/f fandom ghost that I’ve seen is actually the opposite. That is, when given two characters that seem like a viable ship, one of the characters is whacked with a hammer until she fits a mold: an often clumsy or perhaps more accurately careless, butch (and made more so than her canon presentation), very muscular (again, more so than her canon presentation), often quite a ladies woman, very toppy, definitely plays opposite a more repressed or controlled character (but usually one who is bettered rooted in canon as being that), and destroys that character’s neat little world. They are usually, despite their butchness, a lot sillier or softer outside the bedroom, again, and they think sunshine comes out of the other character’s ass even before they get together and -

I’m starting to run into some limitations on the specific words because I just don’t read this enough to stop and articulate it (because I often close out of F/F fics that get too into wedging the characters into archetypes like this rather than the characters themselves (because it does happen a lot) but I very much do have a ‘I know it when I see it’ thing happening here.

I’ve seen it crop up in Buffy/Faith, Kara/Lena, Regina/Emma and in others I have read less extensively (there are F/F ships I’ve never seen it in, like Tara/Willow) that I’m not thinking of specifically

And like, there is a bit of a difference between the m/m fandom ghost, which is really the same character being dressed in a new skin over and over, and that skin usually being a minor or secondary character, etc, and this f/f one, which is more likely (but not always) to be fit into a fairly prominent character, and is less like one character wearing different skin and more many square characters being badly bashed into one round hole, but

I feel like I’m on to something here. For some femmeslash writers, there really are a lot of fics that feel like they’re not writing the two characters. They’re writing the one character and an archetype that may not actually fit the other character all that well, but damn the Torpedos and full speed ahead.

Is it just me, or do most movies today just seem like they’re just going out of their way to find a premise where they can just stuff a bunch of famous actors in and call it a movie?

Like, I’m not saying never cast famous actors, god no, but there should be like... a limit. Because after a certain point, if you make the movie just about being star-studded...

Like, I love Xander. He’s one of my favorites on Buffy. Depending on how you count it, he is my favorite on Buffy (Cordy having half her development split over to AtS, kind of doesn’t count. Kind of. And the Amy Madison I love isn’t really the one that exists on screen).

And I’ll even read the occasional Xander!Harem fic, because despite the absurdity of it all, they can be fun. 

But so many of them rely on this... notion that like, Xander exudes some sort of dominance about him, or a fic will have him do something super manly or even just, save a person’s life and immediately the girl is creaming her panties for him or something.

Like, yes, it’s a smut fic, and yeah, it’s a harem fic, and I’m not saying Xander couldn’t be dominant in the bedroom, especially if that’s what his partner(s) wanted. 

But just...

It is always so laughworthy when they write him as some, natural Alpha Male Super Dom or whatever. 

Like, at least when a fanfic gives Xander some kind of super power that allows him to do that, or reveal that he has Incubus heritage (something more than one fic has done) or whatever, there’s an excuse to do that.

But when it’s just... normal Xander? Like, I’ll be the first to say even as normal Xander, he has positive character traits recommending him, quite a few (though I can’t speak to his attractiveness or lackthereof), but he’s never gonna give off like, Alpha Male™ vibes that just make every woman submit or want him desperately. Even in a smutty harem fic, that just...

I dunno. :shrug:

For me, there’s several ways to look at character sexuality and gender identity.

There’s what is clearly textually stated, what is clearly textually implied (which I generally avoid getting into), what I personally want/wish (usually but not always for shipping purposes, as shipping drives my fannish interest generally) and what would make for a more interesting story.

That last one can be applied to canon - i.e. I think the show is more interesting if we read canonically cishet character A as actually closeted/unrealizing bi/gay/trans/ace/whatever (though I don’t personally have one of these) or the story would be more interesting if the character was out one of those things.

But it can also be applied to fanfic - i.e. I think the story of this fanfic is more interesting, or I have a premise that requires, changing the canon sexualities or even what I think the implied sexuality is.

The male love interest of the canonically heterosexual heroine of <insert game/show/book/movie> you’re writing a fic for is not the reason that said heroine isn’t dating the woman you ship her with!

Technological superiority does not mean cultural or moral superiority! Jesus christ, that is quite possibly the whitest thing I’ve read in a fanfic... okay, only all week, but still.

Christ on a goddamn BIKE.

Really hate it when people equate or even come close to equating ‘colonizing mars (or any other uninhabited planet)’ with ‘colonizing the new world’

I mean, I get that America has earned our reputation as fundie homophobic racist transphobes, et cetera. I get that.

And I get that it kind of had to be that way for the purposes of the story the author wanted to tell (but only Kind of) but like...

Homophobia and transphobia aren’t uniquely american? Like, at all? And they’re certainly not inexorably and inextricably linked to ‘American-ness’. At some point, your story is just being gratuitious. You’re not writing a story where America’s awful evilbadhomophobictransphobia actually needs to come up this often? 

Why is it that all too often, the people who ship the super spicy, problematic ‘toxic’ slash ships (mslash or fslash) in the fandom also ship the most banal of het ships in the same fandom?

I can’t be the only one to notice this?