@the Star Wars fandom: I’d like to throw my two cents in on the whole “Leia was never even tempted by the Dark Side” trend that is seemingly going on right now. Firstly, yes, I understand the joke–gosh darn those whiny Skywalker boys, the girls are so tough and strong (and they are, they absolutely are, don’t get me wrong). But…all the same, guys, I just can’t see it that way. This girl wasn’t just tempted by the Dark Side, she flirted with it on like a daily basis for probably years (both before and after she knew what it was). I mean:
Leia Organa burns with anger. She was horribly, incalculably hurt, more than once, and one of the ways she coped with that was by being angry. (In fact, Carrie herself has described Leia as such, and as having played Leia as such–as a very wounded and broken girl who is incredibly, incredibly angry.) And as we know, according to the Jedi:
“Fear leads to anger Anger leads to hate Hate leads to suffering”
But that doesn’t make Leia any the weaker for it. In fact, I would even say that it goes to show just how strong she was. Because yes she was hurt. (She was hurt so, so badly, so many times.) She had every right to be angry, and hurting–and she did. She was angry. She did hurt. And it would have been so, so easy for her to give into the temptation of the Dark Side through that. Because of that. Because there are so very, very many kinds of temptation–and honestly, with Leia’s anger being such an integral part of her and part of her main coping mechanism, I personally can’t see Leia not being tempted by the Dark Side for years–since before she even knew it was truly a Thing, let alone that it had a name. Because oh, how easy it would have been for her anger to consume her–for her rage and her hatred to supplant all else, until she was nothing but a driving force of nature, a wildfire bound in human flesh that burned all in her path.
But you know what? She didn’t fall. Despite everything, Leia Organa did not fall. And that, to me, shows an incredible strength–one that supercedes even a claim that she was never tempted. (Because to me, saying that she was never tempted strips her of the fury of her wrath, the burning of her pain, the blazing of her power. Because to me that says she wasn’t wounded in the very soul by what happened to Alderaan, to her mind beneath Vader’s probe, to her heart again and again–and she was. Oh, she was. Because to me, taking away Leia’s anger and the rawness of her hurt means taking away what made her such a real character, a real woman, a real survivor.)
Ironically enough, it was love that brought her back from that possible path, just as it brought Vader back from the brink. Because I would eat my left shoe if it wasn’t Luke and Han, Chewie, Threepio and Artoo who kept her grounded, kept her here, gave her something other than anger and fear and hatred and revenge to live for.
Anyway, that’s just my two cents on the matter,
Thank you, Seren. I wish I could find the article now, but there was a good write-up on women being allowed to be portrayed as monsters rather than the virtuous heroine or the victim. We all have a dark side, a dangerous streak. To deny that women have the capacity for evil is to deny that they are fully human.
Leia Organa has indeed flirted with the dark side. She is still fighting the good fight when we see her in TFA but I don’t think that her inner battle is over and her victories have not come easily. Leia has straddled the line between dark and light a few times, but ultimately clawed her way back to the light before she could be consumed by the darkness. Let’s giver her credit for struggling against her demons, rather than treating her as an empty, innately good character.
When Leia speaks of Snoke’s influence over Ben, you can see on her face that she has empathy for her son. She was disgusted with Vader, she didn’t want to understand him, but she has walked a long road with Ben and the appalling things he does do not shock her, she gets it.
This is a woman who has done a lot of growing in order to overcome her darker tendencies and it is a battle that she must engage in daily.
Everyone please sit down and be schooled by Seren. Girl knows her Leia meta.
oh man. listen, @theworldasweknowit16 first of all, as evidenced by the fact that i am only answering this now, i hope that someone way funnier and WAY better at managing their inbox was able to make you laugh when you needed it. hopefully by this point you don’t even need dumb, tardy ol’ molls ofgeo who has turned up to her own comedy special 25 minutes late with a box of donuts and gets belligerent with the audience when they don’t appreciate her turning all the lights off and making them watch all 8 episodes of the blue planet, consecutively.
“THIS WILL MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER!!!! SHUT UP AND LET DAVID ATTENBOROUGH TALK!!!!“ - me, almost certainly getting fired and definitely not getting any royalties
anyway, the point is, i’m very sorry that your relationship ended. that sucks, buddy. for what it’s worth, i think there are bigger things out there for you. single or doubled up, i think you’re gonna be amazing.
ANYWAY, i don’t have any funny, like, ~breakup stories~ because although i know this will come as a shock to all of you, since i am incredibly charming and not at all neurotic, i haven’t had that many relationships that were serious enough that somebody needed to like, Officially End them??
that being said, i have seen destruction in my time, so this story is about the time @urgirlmontana and i walked in on a robbery-in-progress and tried to buy some wine.
so the thing you have to know about me is that fundamentally, to my core, the only thing i really want out of life is to never be gauche or rude, ever, ever. every single one of the mistakes that haunt my dreams are times where i blithely said or did something that violated a rule i didn’t know or maybe just forgot.
i live in constant fear of getting sent to the Principal’s Office of Life, where i imagine an old lady with all of the characteristics of a cat i once had (half an ear, a snaggletooth) makes me sit in detention highlighting all the parts of Emily Post that i don’t have memorized.*
*so like, all of Emily Post. what was the final word about elbows on the table?
the other thing you have to know about me is that i really, really love wine.
luckily for me, there is a convenience store within a couple blocks of where i live that sells two of my favorite things: junk food and wine. and it’s not like i live in a bad part of chicago; like, chicago is chicago but i live in a pretty quiet neighborhood. i mean, i know the neighborhood dogs by name, you know what i’m saying?
my favorite is named maggie she’s a black lab she loves me and if there was a god she would be mine. i mean–what?
haha.
just jokes.
my point here is i never think twice about leaving my house at night to pop to the store or go for a walk or go to this all-night diner place that is like, for sure gonna give me some kind of terrible disease but makes surprisingly good milkshakes. and i extra never think twice if i have someone with me! it’s the buddy system! nothing ever goes wrong when you use the buddy system.
literally the only child at that summer camp NOT destined to die in a terrible water-related accident. DID WE LEARN NOTHING FROM THE MANDATORY SCREENING OF THE BLUE PLANET?
so off we go to purchase our late-night booze & candy–my candy vice of choice at the time was a 3 Musketeers bar–and the short but brisk walk gave me just enough time to like, really get into the zone in terms of thinking about the food i was going to get. like you know when you’re preparing to buy candy and even thought you’re a grown ass adult who can spend however much you want to on whatever the hell you want to, there’s still that tiny voice in the back of your head that sounds like your mom that’s like you can get ONE of those ten candy bars in your hand?
anyway, we get to the store and when we walk in there’s a guy standing right in front of the door. he’s got his arm extended and he’s holding on to another guy who is also standing in front of the door, and honestly, my first reaction was like, “rude??? this is an entryway and an exit??? move like 7 inches to stand in front of the cheese.”
except don’t stand in front of the cheese. i may want some of that later.
my second reaction was: wow, that dude is covered in blood.
now, you would THINK that at this point, my third thought would be something along the lines of, “ABORT ABORT ABORT,” but because of that thing where i never want to be rude to anybody, ever, i instead panicked about Blood Guy noticing me staring at him. so i averted my eyes and skittered past them pretending like i hadn’t noticed.
“HAHA, BLOOD? WHAT BLOOD? I DIDN’T SEE ANY BLOOD. I WAS LASER-FOCUSED ON THIS SHIRAZ.”
when we got to the back of the store where the wine was–and i would like to say, in our defense, nobody actually IN the store at ANY point was like, “don’t come in, we’re busy robbing this establishment,” or even, “if you’re going to be here you have to contribute.” they just sort of let us go to the back of the store and loudly debate what kind of wine we wanted.
while montana read off labels and prices, i wandered up the candy aisle, thinking to myself that i was soooo great for letting that guy bleed without staring at him or making him uncomfortable. like, we’ve all bled profusely in convenience stores before, haven’t we? no need to make him feel uncomfortable.
“um,” montana said suddenly.
“what?”
she pointed. the entire front of the store looked like it had been the victim of the home alone kid. shelves were upended, that weird vat of soup i don’t trust was splashed everywhere, and the very sweet young man who works the register was standing kind of frozen behind the counter, alternating looking at Blood Guy and then back at us.
nobody said anything. it was like all five of us realized at the same time that we had walked in and not noticed what was happening. but like!!! who eXPECTS A ROBBERY? nobody expects a robbery. that’s why they’re effective!!!!
“i don’t…think they’re going to let us buy wine,” said montana.
here’s the thing: how do you get out of a store that’s being robbed but doesn’t…seem interested in robbing you? well, i don’t know what Emily Post would tell you to do, but what we did was put the candy and wine back (IN THEIR PROPER PLACE, because we’re not assholes) and just……excused ourselves.
literally, we just walked back to the door, told everybody goodnight, and left. and like, they let us go? nobody stopped us? i’m pretty sure the sweet boy that mans the register said “have a nice night”?
“so…….wanna go somewhere else?” i asked as a police car pulled up and two cops ran into the store.
“sure,” montana said. “i could go for some pop tarts.”
Guaranteed basic income to every citizen, whether or not they are employed to ensure their survival and that they live in a dignified, humane way, preventing poverty, illness, homelessness, reducing crime, encouraging higher education and learning vocations as well as helping society become more prosperous as a whole.
Wow. Forget raising the minimum wage. This is much much better idea.
The minimum wage could actually drop if we had basic income.
But Americans would never go for it. Miserably slogging through 12 hour days and having businesses open 24/7 is too engrained in our culture.
“BUT WHERE WILL THE GOVERNMENT GET THE MONEY?” screamed Joe Schmoe, slamming a meaty fist onto the table and getting mouth-froth all over the front of his greying tank top. “You libt*rds all think money grows on TREES!! HAHA!”
“But where will people get the incentive to work?!” Mindy Bindy cried, flapping her hands in front of her face. She’d had a fear of the unemployed lollygagging about ever since she was a child and her mother told her to be afraid of the unemployed lollygagging about. “You think people should get paid for nothing? I work hard for my money!”
“But who will serve me?” grumbled Marty McMoneybags. “Who will make me feel important? Who will do my laundry and cook my food and stand in front of me wearing a plastic smile while I take out all my stress—because I do have a lot of stress, you know, being this rich is stressful—on them?” He paused and straightened out the piles of hundred dollar bills on the desk in front of him, then raised his two watery, outraged eyes up to the Heavens. “Lord, if there are no poor people, how will I know that I’m rich??”
I laughed. This is perfect! Well said!
The thing is, while I’m sure you could scrape up a few people who’d be willing to just float by on a guaranteed minimum income? For most people the choice to work would be a no-brainer. “Hmmm. I can get by on 33k a year, or I can take that part time job and make 48k… enough to move to a better apartment, maybe take the family on vacation. Sold.” Hell, most people would want to work simply because it gives one a sense of dignity and something to do with one’s time. (Speaking as someone who’s been unemployed, on extended sick leave, etc. in her time, the boredom and sense of isolation that comes with not having a job is almost as bad as the humiliation of having to depend on other people for one’s survival.)
And with this system, part-time jobs and “non-skilled” jobs would be much more readily available because nobody would need to work two or three jobs just to stay afloat!
Which would ALSO mean that employers and customers couldn’t shamelessly exploit employees the way they can today, because if losing a job weren’t necessarily a financial disaster, more people would be willing to walk out on jobs where they weren’t being treated with dignity.
And if this also applies to students (and it should) then student loans would become much less of a problem, and fewer people would flunk out of school because of having to juggle studies and work.
Far fewer people would be forced to stay with abusive partners, parents or roommates because they couldn’t afford to move out.
And the thing is, all those people who suddenly had money? They’d be spending it. They’d be getting all the stuff they can’t afford now - new clothes, books, toys, locally-produced food, car repairs - and with each purchase money would flow BACK to the government, because VAT, also income tax.
The unemployed and/or disabled wouldn’t need special support any more - which would also mean the government could fire however many admins who are currently engaged in humiliating - *cough* making sure those people aren’t getting money they don’t deserve. Same for medical benefits and pensions. And I’m no legal scholar, but I somehow imagine less financial desperation would lead to less petty crime, and hence less need for police and security everywhere?
TL;DR Doomie thinks this is a good idea, laughs at those who protest.
reblogging for more top commentary
They tried something like this out in Canada as a sort of social experiment, called Mincome. What they found was that, on the whole, people continued to work about as much as they did before. Only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less hours.
But wait, there’s more. Because parents were spending just a little more time at home and involved with their families, test scores increased. Because teens didn’t have to work to support their families, drop-out rates decreased. Crime rates, hospital visits, psychiatric hospitalizations and domestic abuse rates all dropped, as well. More adults pursued higher education. Those who continued to work reported more job flexibility and more opportunity to choose employment they preferred.
Basically, now you can go prove to your asshole family members that society won’t collapse without poor people for you to feel better than.
Every time I read that post about doing things out of spite I remember that C. S. Lewis put that fucking street lamp in Narnia because Tolkien once said that no good fantasy story would have a lamp in it.
Also, in case anyone was curious, Lewis and Tolkien were like…strange bitter author buddies, and Tolkien complained about the heavy-handedness of Narnia’s Christian metaphor, and Lewis complained about EVERYTHING in LotR, basically, and they wrote each other into their stories. According to most reports, the man who carved the Wardrobe was heavily based on Tolkien, and in Middle-Earth C.S. Lewis became (wait for it) Treebeard. Which I imagine was a very interesting conversation.
“You’re the magician who builds a wardrobe leading to Narnia!” “You’re a thing called an Ent that shepherds trees and takes years to make a decision.” “….what the fuck.”
And as far as doing things for spite goes, I can think of at least two major plot points in LotR that only exist because Tolkien was bitter about Macbeth. My takeaway from this would be that if the only thing keeping you going is Sheer Undiluted Bitterness, you’re in good company.
