Oc Guy Moodboard

oc guy moodboard

I recently encountered someone defending the Jedi not freeing Shmi with the argument that “well the type of slavery in Star Wars wasn’t actually that bad” and I think my brain exploded a little bit

this is kind of a fascinating pattern, but in my experience, these arguments almost always end here. the person in the defensive position pulls up weirder and weirder reality-defying pieces of logic. i remember responding to someone's post once because they had made the argument that qui-gon would have started a space international incident if he had just killed watto and taken shmi, and no one, anywhere, had seemingly pointed out the obvious; why? on what basis, exactly, can you assume that would happen? who cares about watto and who is going to start a war with the republic because the jedi happened to off him?

it's a bad argument, with little to support it. most arguments about this subject default to something like that, and i kind of stopped talking about them because there's not really anywhere to go. if they define for themselves that slavery is magically fine in star wars, then we're not really participating in the same reality, are we? we aren't using the same touchstones for how to define the reality we live in, and therefore we really don't gain much by debating. two parallel lines don't intersect. if anyone seriously finds themselves saying, "well, slavery isn't that bad," for any reason they've obviously made a bad argument, because it highlights a misunderstanding of what slavery is fundamentally. the condition of slavery just is evil. it doesn't matter how nicely you think those slaves were treated, owning people as if they were property is just evil, like if they have to call it, "slavery," it is evil and will be evil no matter what you say.

at least, that's how it is for me; how i feel about these concepts may become (justifiably) more abstract because i'm discussing something fictional and therefore it didn't happen to a real person, but i don't change my innate understanding of these concepts from reality to fiction. i'm sure other people do, and that's fine, i guess, it just means we're really not going to agree on much of what's going on in the saga, because we don't even agree on the fundamentals of its reality. "slavery isn't that bad in star wars because it's star wars," is fine, i guess, more power to you, but not everyone sees much value in thinking that way. i really personally don't, but i don't speak for everyone. i have to confess to these arguments making me feel kind of hopeless in a way.

it's just all i think in my brain is - okay, so we as a human race can't get behind the idea that slavery is evil even when it's not real, and we don't have to change anything about our lives to deal with the ramifications of slavery, because it's actually sci-fi slavery for the space wizards, we can't even agree slavery is fundamentally evil then? it's too hard even then, when there is nothing you have to change about your life, your mind, your habits to accommodate that being true? even here we can't let slavery be actually evil? it's still too scary to think that our beloved institutions, our governments, our leaders, might passively watch slavery fester because it benefits them, we can't handle thinking about that even when it doesn't affect our lives in any way whatsoever? when you can escape by turning off the star wars marathon? what will we do when we go outside?

which i recognize on some level is me being unfair, i actually don't know what other people are thinking and where they're coming from, and, "why people say the things that they do," is a fascinating question but it's not something any one person can be definitively right about. it's me projecting the hopelessness i feel about the world outwards. but that's why i don't do this so much anymore. i overthink it and then it just leads to a strange despair, which is a really overinvolved reaction to someone's opinions on a george lucas production

is this anything

something a bit ironic in the fact that due to how we rank swear words star wars can get away with 'hell' and 'damn' but not 'shit' or 'fuck' bcos the use of specifically christian swears raises a TON more questions than 'shit' would

Thinking About Fictional Character while you have music on is such a risky activity. there’s no way EVERY song on this album is literally about Fictional Character. and yet……..

reblog this if you want a LONG (or short) anonymous message saying what they think of you.

pleaaase?