So, if anyone hasn't heard of help_haiti, GO CHECK IT OUT. It's really important that we do as much to help these poor people as possible! It's really awful what's happened, and we need to do all we can! Hence why this post is public :)

That said, while I can't donate anything due to not possessing a working credit card, I thought I might contribute. My muse is dead, but the ever lovely fialleril suggested I maybe do a rant disguised as meta, since I tend to excel at those. Therefore, I'm offering a video rant/meta about ... something. Filst: what should I discuss? You'll most likely be the ones watching it, so give me requests! I can promise you one quality (well, okay, Macbook Pro quality) video of me, complete with the accent that alllllll Americans love, ranting about whatever you want. Grammar fail? Mary Sues? Certain writers? Fic tropes? Give me a subject, I give you 15+ minutes of ... um, lulz? Okay, um. Something. idk. (Jesus fuck this post sounds so self-important!)

The thread to make offers is here, please comment there if you would donate the smallest amount, even £1. Since this is in the interests of helping others, please try to give something. Or, even if you can't, at least spread the word. That's just as important as donating!

So, what should I rant about? Taking requests, provided a donation is made in your name to Haiti ;)

Back in April, I signed up for a fanfic50 claim ... and promptly forgot all about it. Because my muse is dead, I thought, well, why not use one or to of them for drabble prompts? And it ... kind of worked, because for once, I did the unthinkable and actually wrote my own OTP. In any case, I don't know whether it's worth posting to the comm, given how overdue this post is, or even if it's any good.

This was also inspired by the best fic ever, aka yenneffer and her birthday fic for me. Go read it, nowwwwwww!

Title: all our yesterdays
Author: albumsontheside 
Characters: Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala
Timeline: pre-ROTS
Word Count: 200
Summary: Regret is a shroud, translucent and pale, binding their corpses stiff in a stifling parody of fidelity.
Prompt: 018. Regret.

( 'Don’t you think, Anakin, that we shouldn’t have to do it like this? At all?' )

Firstly, a quick note to apologise for not being on LJ a lot recently -- rl has been utter shite recently and I as such haven't had time to dedicate to the flist that I love :(

Secondly, I bring admittedly fucking awful fic for my beloved aubreys_master ! I know it's late and not what you asked for, but the muse has been deader than a dead thing recently and I figured one late fic was better than no fic even if it's crap, so, um, yeah. I think I'll shut up now.

Title: Absolution
Author: albumsontheside
Characters: Beru Lars, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Owen Lars
Timeline: post-ROTS
Word Count: 1515
Summary: Beru and Obi-Wan talk when Luke is brought to Tatooine. ROTS missing scene.

( 'Is that why you're here?' The question is innocent enough, but the way her eyes dart from side to side betrays her. She does not like Jedi. 'Because of politics?' )

Okay, so this post was mostly inspired by some recent wank on fanficrants. (The link goes to the ffrantsrants post with screencaps because the original was deleted, but the content is the same.)

A short summary of what happened: a certain user posted a rant about a fic in her fandom (no, I'm not naming names in this post), and about how she didn't understand its popularity due to its poor grammar, extremely poor characterisation and blatant ableism throughout. While her post was badly worded, inflammatory and posted to the wrong places (she posted it to, amongst other places, the main fandom comm where the fic was extremely popular and where such a post was definitely inappropriate), the whole incident raised a point that I personally found very interesting.

While I am not condoning the way this user critiqued the fic and handled the situation, she did raise some perfectly valid points about said fic -- and some of the comments she received on her post in the fandom comm (and, admittedly, ffr) were downright vicious. One told her to go kill herself. It seemed that the people in the community, who knew neither the poster nor the author of the original fic, were prepared to go to great lengths to defend the integrity of this fic, even though the poster's comments were legitimate in their content and well thought out. (She even said that she had read the whole fic before posting her critique.) Which leads me to the question --

-- why are some fics so unbelievably popular in certain fandoms, and why do the fans often react so personally to any criticism levied against said fics?

Every fandom has one: the story that everyone feels obligated to read, despite its plot or quality, simply because it is "the best" or "the definitive" fic for a plotline or pairing. The fics are, in my experience, often poorly plotted, worded or characterised -- the fic in this case being an example -- and yet, they induce such tribal feelings of devotion in most fans that the fans will, often without motivation from the author, defend the fic as viciously as seen above.

Why do you, fandom, think this is?

ETA: So, we have the original user returning to stir up more drama. Keep watching; this could get interesting.

ETA II: Some people just never learn.

I missed the anime con today because I'm sick. FML.

(But, but, am writing Life as a House fic! My muse has returned! Except, I don't know if anyone on my flist will read it, except maybe lumy12 and archaeologist_d, for whom this is intended to be a late birthday present ...)

Never mind that, because here it is! I don't know if anyone will read it, because there seems to be no fandom for it, which is a shame, because it's a fucking awesome movie. I DEMAND FIC FOR THIS MOVIE WHERE IS IT

This is dedicated to the wonderful archaeologist_d as a belated birthday present.

Title: Three Conversations Sam Monroe Never Had
Author: albumsontheside
Characters: Sam Monroe, George Monroe, Robin Kimball, Colleen Beck, Alyssa Beck.
Timeline: AU.
Word Count: 1660.
Summary: “I'm not listening. I'm not even listening."

( Click. The line goes dead. )

After having seen many, many tutorials on creating black and white icons, I decided to create my own. Okay, so this is really because betareject asked for it, and I can't refuse her anything. This is meant to be a general guide to creating black and white icons, featuring the lovely Padmé Amidala from Star Wars.

Happy birthday, my dearest frodogenic! Hope that Egypt is treating you well -- and, what do you know, I have penned a little story just for you ...

Note: this was inspired by some information I came across while reading Wookiepedia. As I haven't read the comic relevant to this, and have only seen one or two panels, this can either be considered as a missing scene, or as wildly, wildly AU. In any case, the idea ran away with me. As ideas tend to do.

Title: Lest We Forget
Author: albumsontheside
Characters: Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka Tano.
Timeline: Clone Wars
Word Count: 617
Summary: “You wouldn’t ask if you knew. If either of you --“ He breaks off abruptly, the recollection almost as painful as the words. “You don’t know anything. Or understand.”

( This, he resents. )

So, here's a bit of wartime Anakin and Ahsoka interaction that I had hanging around the ol' hard drive. Amielle, this should fulfil your request for Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano.

Title: Hell Is For Children
Author: albumsontheside
Characters: Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano.
Timeline: Storm Over Ryloth, missing scene.
Word Count: 522
Summary: “I’m not going to tell you there was nothing you could’ve done. Because I don’t tell lies.”

( Don't you? )

Well, well. Sammy’s trying to write meta.

Basically, I did a podcast on this way back, after some inspiring discussion with fialleril  and patientalien . But, due to reasons involving a faulty LJ post (no, really), my awful podcast recordings and hosting problems on the site, I decided to type it out, in the hope it would be easier for people to understand.

Oh, and, of course, the discussion. There must always be more discussion.

This is not a transcript of the podcast, for the simple reason that I doubt that you lot want to read about my swearing, my arguments with my father and my war on the fucking MSN bleeps. What it is is a summary of and expansion on the main points I mentioned in the podcast. So, in short, this one is better. Good? Good.

Also, this is my first try at actually writing anything serious, so I apologise for its suckiness.

So, without further ado, let’s discuss Anakin Skywalker and psychology.fialleril’s absolutely amazing meta on the subject. (Also, my thumbs are playing up already, and I still have half of the meta to get through.)

So, moving on …

How would this trauma manifest itself?

So, we have the three main reasons why Anakin Skywalker is fucked up: childhood, upbringing, war. And I believe that the trauma led to him suffering from three main psychological disorders:

- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- Phantom pain [re: injuries]
- Nightmares and flashbacks

Let’s begin with PTSD. For those few of you who might not know what PTSD is, Wikipedia summarises it as:

“[…] an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to one or more traumatic events that threatened or caused great physical harm […] It is a severe and ongoing emotional reaction to an extreme psychological trauma.”

And, as we have already discussed, Anakin has enough psychological trauma to write a textbook on.  Wikipedia even goes on to list possible sources of trauma:

- encountering or witnessing childhood or adult physical, emotional or sexual abuse
- encountering or witnessing an event perceived as life-threatening, such as physical assault, adult experiences of sexual assault, accidents, drug addiction, illnesses, medical complications, or employment in occupations exposed to war or disaster
- violent assault
- kidnapping
- sexual assault
- torture
- being a hostage
- prisoner of war or concentration camp victim
- experiencing a disaster
- violent accidents

(The bolded ones are the ones that I know are canon.)

I think Anakin Skywalker, at the age of twenty-three, can tick most of, if not all of, those boxes.

In addition, Wiki also states that “individuals who are more likely to dissociate during a traumatic event are considerably more likely to develop chronic PTSD.”

Um, hello? Release it into the Force, anyone?

And so, let’s look at the main symptoms of PTSD, and how they are relevant to Anakin Skywalker.

Flashbacks and nightmares: well, obviously. We all know about Anakin Skywalker’s nightmares, which I’ll be discussing in greater detail later (they even have their own little section, see?). But, suffice it to say, he would have had flashbacks of his experiences, and not just those related to the war. And of course, knowing the Jedi, he would have been told to repress them.  Another point about the flashbacks is that on a thread on one of my fics, fialleril and patientalien and I were discussing the likelihood of Anakin having what we termed “Macbeth Syndrome”, where, for example he’d still see the blood on his hands after he’d killed someone. It ... wouldn't be nice.

Difficulty falling or staying asleep: well, we don’t know how canon that is, but come on. The man looked awful by the end of ROTS. Like he hadn’t slept in weeks.

The thing is, he probably hadn’t.

Anger: Does this really need a justification of how it affects Anakin? The whole PT is about how he fails to control all the anger that he has been repressing throughout his life! And also, he was described at being full of anger and fear at the age of nine, well before the war started. Obviously, his life as a slave had given him enough to deal with. God, the Jedi … were fucking idiots. (See? I’m being polite and restraining myself.)

These are the main symptoms of PTSD -- and I’m sure you can see by now how they relate to Anakin. If you’re fighting a war for four years at an insanely young age (19-23), if you’re a General, if you lead the strikes, if you see your men die in front of you … it will affect you. And especially given Anakin’s fear of loss, of losing those he cares about … it will affect him. He will lose Ahsoka, he has almost lost Obi-Wan, he lost his friends, other Jedi. He's not going to be healthy.

A further point about PTSD -- it’s difficult to cure. It’s not a one-shot thing. Wikipedia says that

“Per definition, the symptoms last more than six months and cause significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.”

So, if someone is diagnosed with PTSD, they’ll need years of counselling, and maybe even some form of medication to heal psychologically. Fantards: you can’t just say, it’s peacetime now, therefore, Anakin will be magically cured by his love for Padmé. For fuck’s sake, Padmé’s magical love isn’t the cure to everything! I mean, come on, if you had been fighting a war, if you had seen such awful things, and your wife, who knows nothing of what you have experienced, who would never experience what you have experienced, just said, “oh, I love you, feel better” -- well, you wouldn’t, would you? You might, even, (shock horror) resent the person who said such things to you, because they didn't understand. Also, people with these issues often don't believe they need help, as they believe that they're perfectly fine and that there is nothing wrong with them. Nine times out of ten, they refuse to get help, no matter how much sex they're having, because, as far as they're concerned, they're really all right.

The way to treat such things is therapy, over time. Magical healing sex solves nothing. Nothing.

Another thing I’ll discuss is his injuries. As I’m sticking to the PT for this, I’m mostly going to discuss the loss of his arm.

So, we all know that Anakin lost his arm on Geonosis. Now, according to my research, this meant that he would, in all likelihood, be suffering from something known as phantom pain. For those of you who may not know what phantom pain is, Wikipedia defines it as:

“[…]perceptions that an individual experiences relating to a limb or an organ that is not physically part of the body. Limb loss is a result of either removal by amputation or congenital limb deficiency. However, phantom limb sensations can also occur following nerve avulsion or spinal cord injury. Sensations are recorded most frequently following the amputation of an arm or a leg, but may also occur following the removal of a breast or an internal organ. Phantom limb pain is the feeling of pain in an absent limb or a portion of a limb. The pain sensation varies from individual to individual.”

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’d certainly say that Dooku, er, amputated Anakin’s arm for him, wouldn’t you? And Wikipedia further goes on to say that you need counselling to be cured of these symptoms … and do you think Anakin got it? In a war zone? From Jedi who are convinced that acknowledging emotions are wrong and evil and lead to the Dark Side? Hmm. No. Don’t think so.

And you could argue that yes, he got prosthetic limbs. But -- and here’s the thing -- the limb itself doesn’t really feel anything; it’s, I assume, connected to the nerves remaining on the original arm. Stover makes a reference to this, when he describes how Anakin felt pain in his right arm, even though he had had no pain receptors installed. And I don’t know about you, but that smacks of phantom pain to me.

And finally, onto the third symptom: nightmares and visions.

I will begin by saying this -- and, hang on, I’ll bold it and underline it and italicise it and put it in huge font, just so that you can grasp just how much of a pet peeve of mine this is:

NOT EVERY NIGHTMARE IS A VISION, DAMN IT!

A Jedi can -- most Jedi do, even -- have a nightmare that doesn’t herald the future. In fact, being able to see the future isn’t something that all Jedi can do. Yes, Anakin could. But, not every nightmare he suffered was a vision. A side effect of PTSD is nightmares and flashbacks. And, it would make a lot of sense for him to dream of events in the war that affected him, as opposed to potential futures. I mean, there’s what, three, four years between his dreams of his mother and his dreams of Padmé in canon, isn’t there? So, yes. Please to be realising that not every one of Anakin’s dreams are visions.

So, what is the point of this ramble? Well, it's mostly just a summary of how I see the causes and effects of Anakin’s psychological trauma throughout the PT. I realise I’ve probably got it all wrong and messed up, so don’t hesitate to correct me!

And if you read this far, may the Force be with you!

 
Disclaimer: In this meta, I will be discussing, amongst other things, slavery, abuse, trauma, war and anxiety disorders. If it bothers you, proceed with caution.

Because I had such a stressful day (4/31 exams completed, though, not bad), I have decided the only way to reduce my panic at impending failure is to start a massive, epic, fandom-splitting thread.

So, fandom at large, I pose to you one, simple question:


It can be in any fandom, any method, and any way of doing so, be it fic, kinks or personal canon -- but in what way do you, as a fan, break dubiously canon, semi-canon or fanon norms?

To start us off, I'll commit the ultimate Star Wars sin that will probably get me shot: I hated Matthew Stover's Revenge of the Sith.

I'm so going to hell for this.