Expect Nothing Less.

writerbuddha:

mid-nighttiger:

i wonder how much of the common fandom misconception that the dark side is not actually bad comes from a misunderstanding of where the dark side actually comes from. from what i gather from folks who argue that the dark side isn’t actually bad, it seems they think that someone falls to the dark side because they ‘care too much’ or because of anger over some injustice that must be corrected. if this were true, then the dark side seems pretty reasonable or even the right thing to do, especially for those of us who’ve felt that anger in real life due to an injustice we’ve faced and used it to galvanize our actions

but the dark side isn’t rooted in anger. it’s rooted in fear – fear of loss of power, or control, or life, or another person. fear that can lead to anger, yes, but it’s not the righteous anger of a protector for those less fortunate, but an anger that twists one’s principles and causes hate and suffering. honestly, the dark side has more in common with the hateful people in real life who cause the very injustices we’re angry about, who are often also afraid of a (perceived) loss of power that leads them to mistreat others

The dark side is fear, anger, hate, aggression, selfishness, greed and self-centeredness. These are all within ourselves, all of us. It doesn’t make us bad or evil, but evil behavior arises as a result from being under the sway of this part of ourselves.

The fundamental problem is that there are too many people who heard Yoda saying, “beware of the dark side” and immediately said, he says, “avoid the dark side at all cost.” Which fits neatly into the web notions many people grew up with: “anger is ugly, anger is wrong, anger is bad, anger is nasty therefore, if you feel it, it will make you ugly, wrong, bad, nasty.” But all what Yoda is saying is that the dark side is dangerous so one must be careful with it.

Because yes, anger can be energizing, inspiring, forceful, it will bring you swifter reactions and more decisiveness, but it will distort your perception, because it’s an energy that is just blind.

It’s possible that in some situation, especially when you witness social injustice or want to prevent harm, your compassion for those who suffer brings forth an equally strong feeling of outrage. So, that’s anger is about an injustice. And it can, in a short term, make your mind more focused and give you an extra burst of energy and determination, but when you rely on that anger to get things done, when you relinquish control to your anger, so it will make you powerful, it’s no longer helpful and you become part of the problem.

Because anger will paint a picture of your enemy that is purely and 100% Evil, thus, it’s okay to do evil to them, because you fight against Evil, you’re destroying Evil, so anything you do to them is Good. This is a lie, making you cruel, sadistic, without remorse, someone who takes pleasure in causing pain and suffering. You have to understand and be mindful of the fact that the people who are hurting you and those who you love, are thinking the same about you and those who you love. This is the trap. You feed on and slowly become the same thing that you want to destroy.

This is we must be mindful. To be mindful of one’s emotions is to be conscious and aware of them - generally, they are making us to respond immediately, without any conscious thought, pushing us to act upon them, driven by them. However, by bringing our emotions into the space of our conscious and passive, i.e. non-judgmental and non-reactive awareness, with calmness and inner peace, their power to kick us out of the driver’s seat, to narrow our perspective and distort our perception of reality falls away: we can find the gap between the moments of our experience and the reaction, response, where we have control, and not falling under the sway of fear, anger, aggression or hatred.

david-talks-sw:

The series Ahsoka is coming out soon, and in light of the recent comments by Ashley Eckstein…

… I figured I’d also point out that people hated Ahsoka.

Every complaint you’ve heard about Rey? It had been hurled at Ahsoka about 7 years prior.

• “Oh, she’s fighting Grievous and she’s only, like 13?! That’s so OP!”
• “She feels like a Mary Sue written for a prequel based fan fiction.”
• “Oh, she disobeyed an order from Yularen on Ryloth?! She’s so snippy!”
• “Ugh, I hate her and her stupid voice!”
• “She’s always pointing out stuff other characters have missed, like she’s so perfect! She’s a Mary Sue with an annoying voice and personality.”

And honestly? I remember that period. People despised Ahsoka (and sometimes voiced anger towards Ashley Eckstein too), just like they hated Hayden Christensen, and most Prequel-related content.

But guess what? They weren’t the target audience. Said Eckstein in her 2018 book It’s Your Universe:

“Ahsoka’s arrival on the scene was met with mixed reactions. She had a big personality and was very snippy. […] She talked back to Anakin, and some even called her bratty. Critics didn’t quite know what to think, but kids loved her. Finally, girls had another character besides Leia and Padmé to play on the playground — and now there was a lightsaber in their hands.”

They didn’t “fix” Ahsoka, as you’ll see on some click-baity YouTube thumbnails.

She had a fucking character arc. There was nothing to fix.

The whole point of her character is that she starts out as immature and petulant as Anakin is in Episode II. This forces Anakin himself to grow up, so he can better take care of her.

Eventually, they both mature together… and at some point, Ahsoka surpasses Anakin by learning and implementing the Jedi teachings, while Anakin remains stuck on that first part (no thanks to Palpatine).

Same thing goes for Reva. The character has a goddamn arc.

I’m all for putting a “save the cat” moment to make these characters more likeable (and even when they do, like they did with Rey, then somehow the problem becomes that they’re too likeable), but at the same time, I think parts of the fandom should wait and see before prematurely hating on a character (who almost always “just happens” to be female, weird!) to see what story is being told.

flyboy-and-fight-me:

Yodito

mid-nighttiger:

i wonder how much of the common fandom misconception that the dark side is not actually bad comes from a misunderstanding of where the dark side actually comes from. from what i gather from folks who argue that the dark side isn’t actually bad, it seems they think that someone falls to the dark side because they ‘care too much’ or because of anger over some injustice that must be corrected. if this were true, then the dark side seems pretty reasonable or even the right thing to do, especially for those of us who’ve felt that anger in real life due to an injustice we’ve faced and used it to galvanize our actions

but the dark side isn’t rooted in anger. it’s rooted in fear – fear of loss of power, or control, or life, or another person. fear that can lead to anger, yes, but it’s not the righteous anger of a protector for those less fortunate, but an anger that twists one’s principles and causes hate and suffering. honestly, the dark side has more in common with the hateful people in real life who cause the very injustices we’re angry about, who are often also afraid of a (perceived) loss of power that leads them to mistreat others

foone:

Does anyone remember what happened to Radio Shack?

They started out selling niche electronics supplies. Capacitors and transformers and shit. This was never the most popular thing, but they had an audience, one that they had a real lock on. No one else was doing that, so all the electronics geeks had to go to them, back in the days before online ordering. They branched out into other electronics too, but kept doing the electronic components.

Eventually they realize that they are making more money selling cell phones and remote control cars than they were with those electronic components. After all, everyone needs a cellphone and some electronic toys, but how many people need a multimeter and some resistors?

So they pivoted, and started only selling that stuff. All cellphones, all remote control cars, stop wasting store space on this niche shit.

And then Walmart and Target and Circuit City and Best Buy ate their lunch. Those companies were already running big stores that sold cellphones and remote control cars, and they had more leverage to get lower prices and selling more stuff meant they had more reasons to go in there, and they couldn’t compete. Without the niche electronics stuff that had been their core brand, there was no reason to go to their stores. Everything they sold, you could get elsewhere, and almost always for cheaper, and probably you could buy 5 other things you needed while you were there, stuff Radio Shack didn’t sell.

And Radio Shack is gone now. They had a small but loyal customer base that they were never going to lose, but they decided to switch to a bigger but more fickle customer base, one that would go somewhere else for convenience or a bargain. Rather than stick with what they were great at (and only they could do), they switched to something they were only okay at… putting them in a bigger pond with a lot of bigger fish who promptly out-competed them.

If Radio Shack had stayed with their core audience, who knows what would have happened? Maybe they wouldn’t have made a billion dollars, but maybe they would still be around, still serving that community, still getting by. They may have had a small audience, but they had basically no competition for that audience. But yeah, we only know for sure what would happen if they decided to attempt to go more mainstream: They fail and die. We know for sure because that’s what they did.

I don’t know why I keep thinking about the story of what happened to Radio Shack. It just keeps feeling relevant for some reason.

padawansuggest:

changedsunlight:

“boohoo obi wan was such a stickler as a padawan he was all by the books and wouldn’t break a rule to save his life”

my brother in christ. he was the worst one out of his entire lineage. he just learnt to poker face. man stayed behind on child soldier planet as a kid because he told qui gon to fuck off. he has never followed any rule but his own, he just knew how to lie. and also to be a bit more refined about it than his master and padawan

Yoda gave him to Qui-Gon cause the only way to get him to follow a rule was to get him to rebel against a maverick Master. He’s a goody two shoes ONLY when it suits his need to fight Qui-Gon and annoy him.

d33r-wolf:

gingerswagfreckles:

Holy Fucking Shit

antianakin:

Just realized that TCW managed to completely and utterly spit in the face of everyone who believed the Jedi Order didn’t see droids as sentient and didn’t respect them and would have scoffed and derided Anakin for his interest in them.

Because Huyang exists and he literally holds the rank of Master due to his incredible experience in the art of creating lightsabers. The initiates are gently scolded for their shock about it in the Gathering arc and then it never comes up again and they all treat Huyang like one of them because he IS.

So fuck all of the headcanons and Legends material that claims the Jedi don’t respect or like droids, they’re literally the only people we see that manage to give a droid an actual rank and a position of power within their culture (by contrast, Naboo and Alderaan appear to care for their droids and treat them with respect, but there’s no indication anywhere that they have droids in positions of power or leadership similar to Huyang being a Jedi Master).