- Pronouns
- He/Him
That's over 10,000 words. Is the complete thing the entire chapter because I would be interested in anything you have?
Writing Something Every Day*, Xantalos Edition
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
Not even close - at least 8200 of it is the text of one research action, which'll probably end up totaling around 15k if my projections are accurate. It'll make sense when it's done.
I do have a section that I could technically release now, but it's fairly small, only ... 1.2k or so I think, and I don't wanna overly tease the thread. What's your opinion?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
In my lone opinion, I admit that is a little bit much teasing.
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
I get that. The idea's gonna be good when it's done, I guarantee it - wouldn't have gotten this sucked into it otherwise.
…
Wait, this is the same question I ask myself every time I write an update. I get the sense I know what the answer's gonna be, but I'll poll the thread itself.
- Pronouns
- He/him
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
Oh, my muse has already done all its work, now it's up to me to get my disorganized ass in gear and write.
Which I haven't been able to do for the past few days. It'll happen, though.
- Pronouns
- He/him
- Pronouns
- He/him
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
Holidays are weird, I'm convinced linear time doesn't actually exist in them. I'm not sure how much exactly I wrote over the last ... week and a bit, but the section is officially half done and has crested 10k words. I'm not certain how or why. The work continues, though!
- Pronouns
- He/him
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
Did another … 1362 on the random ramble thing last night. Mostly about Star Wars minutiae.
- Pronouns
- He/him
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
Seems to be functioning to a degree - did about 229 words so far today, as opposed to the zero I had before.
- Pronouns
- He/him
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
I've been doing alright, though I really haven't written... basically anything since the last time I posted in this thread. I'd say life's been kicking my ass, but it hasn't really, I've just been caught up with focusing on other stuff. I definitely made the scope on this update too large, I'll be able to complete it but it's been a hell of a thing for something that should've just been a prelude to the actual meat of the update.
On Love
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
I didn't really write this with the intention that anyone but myself would ever read it - hell, even I've only read it twice, once as I wrote it and once just now to see if I'd care if people saw it - so it doesn't have any real structure, breaks my self-imposed rule of no roided paragraphs, and is overall rather rambly and janky and not really a treat for the eyes.
It also covers topics some might find uncomfortable - low self-worth, obsessive thoughts, self-hatred, pretty sure I hint at suicidal ideation at one point in it - point being it's not really a thing you should read if you want to retain a good mood, though it ends positively, I think. I'm fine, I should clarify, this is all stuff from way back that I've processed and moved on from, for the most part. Just wanted to give a disclaimer. Consider this a mild content warning thingy.
It also covers topics some might find uncomfortable - low self-worth, obsessive thoughts, self-hatred, pretty sure I hint at suicidal ideation at one point in it - point being it's not really a thing you should read if you want to retain a good mood, though it ends positively, I think. I'm fine, I should clarify, this is all stuff from way back that I've processed and moved on from, for the most part. Just wanted to give a disclaimer. Consider this a mild content warning thingy.
Much of what I've observed of love is possessive. Little enunciations, idle gestures that beg reciprocation with unsaid refrains. I love you - say it back. I miss you - you miss me, right? It's an exchange - you are given affection, you are expected to give back. That's just how it works, it's only fair after all, and if you fail to reply you're left either with confused silence, disappointment, or consternation - you've broken the rules. You didn't say it back and that means you don't love them. How could you? They gave themselves to you like an egg, and you let it slip from your fingers and splatter all over the floor. It's tile, but still, c'mon.
It's never with a sense of malice or falsitude, never with a sense that you're being lied to or anything. With love like this, you are prized - but maybe that's the problem. Prizes are something you hold, something that's yours and no one else's. Their value to a person is derived not just from their inherent worth, but the connection they feel with it, the fact that it's their prize. A trophy that belongs to someone else is something that can be admired, coveted, lusted after and obsessed over, but only ever in relation to yourself. It's not yours, so it should be. You want it and its absence pains you. You have to figure out how to get it, how to take it, how to make it exclusive to you.
I've never told anyone I love them in those exact words in my entire life, and I've never really been able to figure out why. It's not apprehensiveness, or fear of being rejected that stops them from being said. They just don't seem real when I try to drag them up my throat and twist my tongue to accommodate them. They feel false on a level I can't articulate. I use wordplay to get around it, some more elegant than others. Love you. "Me too." "Okay." "Makes sense." Can't ever direct the word love towards anyone or it's not real.
I love you. What does that mean? I'm not sure if I've ever really felt it, and I'm not sure if it's due to some personal quirk or lack of proper examples. Mayhaps I have loved all my life and just never realized it, though I rather doubt it. What are you supposed to feel when the people you spend life with are far away for an extended time period? I've heard it described as a visible absence, a space the other person fills that you unconsciously move around even when they're not there. A sense of uncomfortable emptiness, of silence that longs to be filled with words. That's what "I miss you" means, or so I've been told. To be honest, though, I've never felt anything like that. Nor do I want to, really. It sounds kinda shitty. I'm comfortable enough around people, but I don't miss them like I'm addicted to their presence or something.
I dunno, it just doesn't feel right to say I love anyone. Never really has. Anytime I get it described to me, or see an example in written fiction or movies or hear a song about it, it always sounds … pre-arranged. Like something that has to happen for the script to move forwards, but no one ever says why it happens, it just does. A mother has to love her child, because otherwise how could Voldemort ever have been defeated? Siblings have to share that ineffable bond, otherwise it wouldn't be a tragedy when fuckin uuhhh Murtagh betrays Eragon. Inheritance Cycle spoilers, sorry. The predominant majority of all main characters have to find a love interest, because that's just how stories work. They reflect the human condition, people find life partners, so stories have to as well. But it's never questioned, never explained, there's never a why, always a how.
It's worse in music, from what I can see, at least the popular stuff. People with actual taste can scoff at how generic and samey pop music (or modern hip-hop or whatever other genre, I don't know music - the shit that plays on the mainstream radio stations) is all they want, it wouldn't be popular if people didn't like it. The lyrics are different, the music changes, but what the songs say is always the same. I crave you. The experiences you bring. Your textures. Your shapes. Your colors. I want to possess your laughter and swallow it whole so it can't be heard. I want you. I will carve a space shaped like you out of my flesh, and the only thing that will salve my pain is if I can envelop you and fit you into this empty wound. Tell me what I must do to acquire you. The others who pursue you are not worthy - I will prove myself better or expose them for a pack of scavengers, lusting after the feast you represent. I don't want to let you go. Give me moments that no one else has experienced. Promise me you will never share yourself. You are precious to me. You are mine, and I want to ensure you stay that way.
It all seems so driven by unexpressed pain. How can you look at someone once, know that you'll never be content again unless you know them body and soul, and ever, in a thousand lifetimes, consider that a good thing, something to be desired and encouraged? It's … Slaanesh from the various Warhammer franchises is the god of obsession and inner emptiness at its core. It's a being that grants its followers the capacity to experience heights of agony and ecstasy more intense than anything a mortal could ever imagine, and it does so for the purpose of rendering those experiences dull and worthless. Once you've tasted a Slaaneshi fruit, you can never again be satisfied by anything normal, and even the excesses you're introduced to grow stale and unfulfilling with time. You are driven ever onwards, in search of new experiences, stretching your mouth and stomach wider and wider to accommodate them, and the gnawing emptiness inside you grows bigger each time. You drink an entire ocean's worth of joy and the only thing you feel is more thirst.
I don't think it's an unrelated coincidence that people who pursue affection too recklessly are called 'thirsty'. Not because they risk summoning daemonettes with sheer power of simping, but the same principles that Slaanesh wields apply to those in the grips of the possessive addiction that people seem adamant on calling love. You can't ever stay happy when you experience it. Each gesture of affection sears through your veins like fire, your flesh is filled with jitters and you feel a sickly sweet tearing sensation in your chest. It's never enough, because even as it happens, it fades. It's like trying to hold onto sand - the super dry, wispy, powdery kind, not wet beach sand. It slips through your fingers and all you're left with is the memory of what it felt like while it was there - and how can you rest when you have a memory so damningly alluring? How can you sit still, think of the present, acknowledge what you have, when you're so fucking achingly aware of what you are lacking? Of course you'll try to get closer to them through whatever means you can manage. It's not even really a conscious thing at a certain point, no more than snatching your hand away from a hot stove is. Give them a gift, they'll give you attention. Follow them around, it aches to be apart. Learn to write poetry, learn to make paper flowers and spend hours coloring them, meticulously, exactingly. Memorize jokes, memorize their schedule, do whatever you can to manufacture the experiences you crave. It's an itch that's impossible to scratch, but you have to try or else it'll eat you alive. You drive yourself onwards with the same stubborn, involuntary determination as a person reaching the 84th page of Pornhub search results because goddamnit you haven't found what'll make it stop yet. It's tunnel vision of the worst kind, and no matter how rational or self-aware you are, you can't stop yourself from getting swept up in it. You can scream and struggle inside your own mind, spend every waking minute monitoring your thoughts for anomalous patterns, traitorous thoughts that scream for satisfaction, and ruthlessly squishing every one you find, but the truth is that you were never in control of yourself, and you only ever realize it when you wake up and a you that feels false is piloting your mind and body and the empty agony within you is growing ever larger and you can't make yourself do anything to stop it. All you do is choke on the sickly sweet sea of yearning and feel your identity drown, inch by inch.
And of course when you're pursuing someone you don't tell them about it, what, are you fucking stupid? That goes against the essence of the word. A pursuit implies … it's a chase, it's a hunt, it's having your eye on another and proceeding towards them for your own sake. Humans evolved to be persistence predators, for crying out loud - our gigabrain evolutionary strat was to power walk menacingly at whatever we wanted to eat until it got too tired to run away. Pursuit implies predation, it means opportunism. Outright telling the person you're pursuing that you're pursuing them is like walking up to a cow and co-moo-nicating (bazinga) to them that you'd like to eat them, please and thank you[1]. When you've been consumed by inner thirst to such an extent that your sense of self-worth is nonexistent, the only outcome your predictive capacity can see from openly communicating is that they might refuse - and if they might, they will. So you've got to adopt a different strategy, be the spider to their fly, and manipulate them with great care over an exceedingly long period of time into giving themselves to you. For their sake. Or that might be how you justify it, anyway, that you're doing something good. Anything to distract yourself from the unpleasant truth that you don't really care for them so much as what you feel from them. You thirst for what you don't have because it isn't yours, crawling over scorching dunes after beautiful mirages, looking over patches of real water because it doesn't sparkle and shine like they do. It's not about having it, it's about getting it.
…apologies, I was a worse person before and the memories can still be rather intense. I've broken out of those toxic thought patterns in the intervening time, learned how to preempt their taking root and how to get rid of them while they're still small. An unpleasant process but it had to be done, I wouldn't be alive right now if I hadn't. What was I talking about?
Ah yes, love. What I described above obviously isn't it - or if it is, a staggeringly large number of people are flirting with oblivion and desperately need help - but if unrestrained longing and affection isn't love, what is? Intimate familiarity could be presented as one example, but I'm honestly not convinced by it, though I can't fully articulate why. The above example of not knowing how to miss people are a start of an explanation, I suppose. Maybe this is more of a thing relating to my circumstances more than familiarity not being a part of love. I don't really know who I am, so the faces I present to people are incomplete, in a sense. Some are better constructed than others - in some personas I'm knowledgeable and articulate, in some I'm eager and attentive, yet others quiet and withdrawn, but none of them are really my own face, so to speak. There's probably a japanese saying about this kind of thing.
Anyway, because the faces I present to people aren't real, the connections I forge with them aren't quite real to me either. They're something I can shed as easily as changing clothes, there's no sense of their actions or feelings mattering to me in a sense of innate value. It's more related to convenience - if I piss this person off, I can't use their facility to train. If I don't make an effort to initiate contact with that person, they'll drop off my radar. If I don't make the right words and gestures form in my mouth and hands, this person will think I don't love them, and will express resentment towards me, unconsciously or not. They're relationships of exchange, but not ones I feel any attachment to aside from the potential benefits or detriments they might give me.
So being familiar with someone, even if they trust you completely and tell you things no one besides them has ever heard, isn't love. At least in my opinion. It's not something that you're given, or that you can take. This is probably an incredibly selfish view of things to take, now that I consider it - or rather, now that it seems like an appropriate time to point out to you, dear reader, that I have considered it, in order to make this walk through my thought processes seem less artificially constructed than it is. Even if no one else ever reads these words, the intent behind them is still fundamentally false, because the intent behind them is to provoke a reaction that has been carefully considered in the back of my mind, probably without my conscious realization.
Anyway.
Love can't be taken, and it can't be given to you. So what is it? Why is it so important (allegedly)? Is this entire rant being written solely because it's very late and I'm tired and my pessimism filters are slipping too heavily over my eyes and/or brain? Why am I slamming out so many words for this bullshit when I can barely get myself to string a sentence together for the shit I actually enjoy writing?
This isn't really a complete answer, for the reasons of I'm not ready to let myself go through this sort of change yet, I only vaguely remember the train of thought I had from when I was less tired, and I don't really trust this anyway. Call it reflex. But love isn't taken, nor is it received, it's given. Hoarding it, possessing it, is the antithesis to what I think love is. It's not a thing that can be held or had, only shared. It only exists in the moment that it's directed. Like a sunbeam or some other pretty simile. Can only be seen in relation to other things and whatnot. I should give examples.
Love for another person is wanting them to be happy, without wanting to be happy because they're happy. Does that make sense? It's not something that you can benefit from, at least not directly. It has to be given without expectation of, or even desire for, reward. Whatever form it takes, it has to have this sentiment driving it. It can be towards others, sure, but also towards yourself. Plenty of people don't love themselves, I sure as fuck didn't until a while ago. Still kinda don't. Point being, I reckon love is like the buddhist ideal of compassion - don't quote me on this, I read a book by the Dalai Lama like 7 years ago, that's all I know about the thing - more than a sense of attachment. It's not something that can lead to anything bad. It can't be refused, because it's not given with the expectation that it will be received, so there can't be any sense of pain from rejection. It can't come from emptiness, a sense of wanting, or incompleteness - if you don't have compassion for yourself, you can't realistically give it to anyone else. It's a light that doesn't cast a shadow. It's … it's seeing a cool rock that you know someone you think of will like, picking it up for their sake, and only remembering it's there when you meet them.
- - -
Woah damn. Coming back to this a few days later, man was I in a mood. I wrote all that in like an hour, too - that's more in one sitting than I've managed in several months and it's wasted on a whiny diatribe about my semi-resolved mind scars instead of the stuff I actually enjoy writing. Bleh. Apologies to anyone who read through that, if this ever gets posted somewhere any eyes but my own behold it.
Anyway, since I'm an unrepentant nerd, I figure I may as well cap this off by rambling about the Jedi and how both they and everyone who whines about them not being able to hook up and how that totally sucks bro are wrong and can fight me if they wish to disprove it. Before I'm eviscerated by internet debate people and a host of affronted psychic space paladins, allow me to elucidate.
A big plot thread in the Star Wars prequels is how Anakin and Padme's love for each other (leaving aside, for the moment, how goddamn creepily it's contextualized as happening in AOTC) is a forbidden thing - Anakin's a Jedi, he's not allowed to love, or more specifically, get into a romantic relationship with someone. There Is No Emotion, There Is Peace. There Is No Passion, There Is Serenity. There Is No Third Line, I'm Quoting The Code Out Of Order Anyway. A common criticism of this I've seen is that the Jedi being so dogmatic about this point, refusing to acknowledge the role emotion plays in people's decisions, led them to becoming detached and ignorant of the galaxy's affairs. Fear of being expelled from the Order led Anakin to live a double life, keeping the monumental secret of his marriage from all of his peers and friends, never allowing himself to fully trust them, leading to increasing emotional isolation masked by bravado over time as the stress of the Clone Wars pushed on him, which left plenty of room for his ol' trusty pal The Senate Friendpatine to manipulate him into betraying the Jedi. And sure, that did happen. Anakin was an unstable mess even from before AOTC started, and especially after that movie should've been going through mandatory counseling to resolve the trauma he endured in that clusterfuck of … how long was that movie in-universe, a week? Less? Dude went through some heavy shit, and the Jedi did indeed fuck up as a whole by not realizing that he was in need of help, trust, and assurance until it was too late.
And also the whole 'a Sith is manipulating the galaxy in a double-sided civil war shell game in order to establish a fascist space empire and kill all of you' thing, but really, who would believe it was the Sheev?
Anyway, while those criticisms kinda have a base, since it was explicitly Anakin's love for his son that drove him to betray The Senate and destroy the Sith at the end of the saga (there is no sequel trilogy), they also kinda … don't? Even ignoring all the material that isn't direct movie canon that both disproves that allowing relationships cures dark side blue balls and that the Republic Jedi didn't allow relationships, which there is a lot of*, the whole point of the Jedi not allowing relationships is a misinterpreted one. They didn't disallow that stuff because they're stuffy space monks who don't remember how real people live, they discourage it because they're space paladins with a universal mandate to protect innocents, root out corruption, and fight evil wherever they go, and quite often end up making decisions that impact thousands of lives, at minimum, in drastic and far-reaching ways. For that kind of thing you need to be as objective as possible if you want to do the most good (even if you don't subscribe to utilitarian ethics this applies), and having the inevitable situation pop up where a Jedi's subject to a conflict of interest between saving a loved one and saving a bunch of innocent people (see: around 60% of the plots found in any Star Wars novel) will lead to suboptimal decisions being made, and overall trust in the Order reduced.
Side note, another major reason passionate entanglements aren't a thing the Jedi look lightly on is because the Force seems to function as a sort of psychic feedback loop - this is consistent in pretty much any SW material, what you give to the Force it'll give back to you. This is how the dark side works, it amplifies your fear, anger, and general mental instability and feeds it back to you, the strength and volatility of your emotions means you're more apt to turn to dark side powers to solve a scenario, that feeds back more anger and whatnot into your mind, and before you know it you're a pale-skinned, yellow eyed raving lunatic faster than someone spiraling into a meth addiction and a blackpill mentality simultaneously. Obviously this is reversible if it's caught before you cross any moral event horizons, but given the depths of despondency that romantic troubles can cast a well-meaning person into, is it any wonder that the Jedi would want to minimize the instance of traumatic events within their super-empath population? And hell, this isn't even including the fact that the 'ban' was really just a strong suggestion - see the examples I'll probably list at the bottom.
Point being, the Jedi as an institution didn't forbid romantic interaction because they don't understand the emotions of normal people, it's just that their mandate was to hold to a type of universal compassion, unconditional love for all things. Anakin even says so in AOTC, albeit in such a way that makes it clear that he's using the words as a justification for his infatuation. They discourage romantic attachment because valuing one person more than you value anything else can result in moral dilemmas if, say, you have to sacrifice yourself to save an exploding building full of people or whatever. Jedi were always kinda space buddhist with their non-attachment stuff, which I suppose makes Qui-Gon and those Jedi who followed the philosophy of the Living Force … space Taoist? Anakin's fuckups aside, I don't really think the Jedi were guilty of having the wrong dogma or mission so much as … really, it was their insistence on being involved in political situations but avoiding playing the game of politics that fucked them over. I just plain don't see any evidence for their policy on romance being the one thing that would've saved them if it had been changed.
*Just off the top of my head:
[1] Reading this back later, another note can be taken of this sort of toxic mindset from the language used here - the fact that one's own affections are referred to as a predatory action implies that on some level, they know they're engaging in behavior that's unhealthy, be that for themselves or for others. Additionally, the self-worth of the person who thinks like this is in such a deteriorated, negative state that it's seemingly hard for them to believe that anything they do could ever be positively received, or turn out well - they hate themselves, and that colors their perception of how everyone else views them. It's a uniquely interesting cycle of self-defeat, as you beat yourself down for being a bad person, and then seek out comfort in whatever form you can perceive to relieve the mental strain you're experiencing, and then punish yourself more for attempting to relieve said pain because you think you'll spread it to other people.
Truth be told I've no recollection of how I managed to break out of that particular cycle. I do remember it being very anticlimactic, though.
It's never with a sense of malice or falsitude, never with a sense that you're being lied to or anything. With love like this, you are prized - but maybe that's the problem. Prizes are something you hold, something that's yours and no one else's. Their value to a person is derived not just from their inherent worth, but the connection they feel with it, the fact that it's their prize. A trophy that belongs to someone else is something that can be admired, coveted, lusted after and obsessed over, but only ever in relation to yourself. It's not yours, so it should be. You want it and its absence pains you. You have to figure out how to get it, how to take it, how to make it exclusive to you.
I've never told anyone I love them in those exact words in my entire life, and I've never really been able to figure out why. It's not apprehensiveness, or fear of being rejected that stops them from being said. They just don't seem real when I try to drag them up my throat and twist my tongue to accommodate them. They feel false on a level I can't articulate. I use wordplay to get around it, some more elegant than others. Love you. "Me too." "Okay." "Makes sense." Can't ever direct the word love towards anyone or it's not real.
I love you. What does that mean? I'm not sure if I've ever really felt it, and I'm not sure if it's due to some personal quirk or lack of proper examples. Mayhaps I have loved all my life and just never realized it, though I rather doubt it. What are you supposed to feel when the people you spend life with are far away for an extended time period? I've heard it described as a visible absence, a space the other person fills that you unconsciously move around even when they're not there. A sense of uncomfortable emptiness, of silence that longs to be filled with words. That's what "I miss you" means, or so I've been told. To be honest, though, I've never felt anything like that. Nor do I want to, really. It sounds kinda shitty. I'm comfortable enough around people, but I don't miss them like I'm addicted to their presence or something.
I dunno, it just doesn't feel right to say I love anyone. Never really has. Anytime I get it described to me, or see an example in written fiction or movies or hear a song about it, it always sounds … pre-arranged. Like something that has to happen for the script to move forwards, but no one ever says why it happens, it just does. A mother has to love her child, because otherwise how could Voldemort ever have been defeated? Siblings have to share that ineffable bond, otherwise it wouldn't be a tragedy when fuckin uuhhh Murtagh betrays Eragon. Inheritance Cycle spoilers, sorry. The predominant majority of all main characters have to find a love interest, because that's just how stories work. They reflect the human condition, people find life partners, so stories have to as well. But it's never questioned, never explained, there's never a why, always a how.
It's worse in music, from what I can see, at least the popular stuff. People with actual taste can scoff at how generic and samey pop music (or modern hip-hop or whatever other genre, I don't know music - the shit that plays on the mainstream radio stations) is all they want, it wouldn't be popular if people didn't like it. The lyrics are different, the music changes, but what the songs say is always the same. I crave you. The experiences you bring. Your textures. Your shapes. Your colors. I want to possess your laughter and swallow it whole so it can't be heard. I want you. I will carve a space shaped like you out of my flesh, and the only thing that will salve my pain is if I can envelop you and fit you into this empty wound. Tell me what I must do to acquire you. The others who pursue you are not worthy - I will prove myself better or expose them for a pack of scavengers, lusting after the feast you represent. I don't want to let you go. Give me moments that no one else has experienced. Promise me you will never share yourself. You are precious to me. You are mine, and I want to ensure you stay that way.
It all seems so driven by unexpressed pain. How can you look at someone once, know that you'll never be content again unless you know them body and soul, and ever, in a thousand lifetimes, consider that a good thing, something to be desired and encouraged? It's … Slaanesh from the various Warhammer franchises is the god of obsession and inner emptiness at its core. It's a being that grants its followers the capacity to experience heights of agony and ecstasy more intense than anything a mortal could ever imagine, and it does so for the purpose of rendering those experiences dull and worthless. Once you've tasted a Slaaneshi fruit, you can never again be satisfied by anything normal, and even the excesses you're introduced to grow stale and unfulfilling with time. You are driven ever onwards, in search of new experiences, stretching your mouth and stomach wider and wider to accommodate them, and the gnawing emptiness inside you grows bigger each time. You drink an entire ocean's worth of joy and the only thing you feel is more thirst.
I don't think it's an unrelated coincidence that people who pursue affection too recklessly are called 'thirsty'. Not because they risk summoning daemonettes with sheer power of simping, but the same principles that Slaanesh wields apply to those in the grips of the possessive addiction that people seem adamant on calling love. You can't ever stay happy when you experience it. Each gesture of affection sears through your veins like fire, your flesh is filled with jitters and you feel a sickly sweet tearing sensation in your chest. It's never enough, because even as it happens, it fades. It's like trying to hold onto sand - the super dry, wispy, powdery kind, not wet beach sand. It slips through your fingers and all you're left with is the memory of what it felt like while it was there - and how can you rest when you have a memory so damningly alluring? How can you sit still, think of the present, acknowledge what you have, when you're so fucking achingly aware of what you are lacking? Of course you'll try to get closer to them through whatever means you can manage. It's not even really a conscious thing at a certain point, no more than snatching your hand away from a hot stove is. Give them a gift, they'll give you attention. Follow them around, it aches to be apart. Learn to write poetry, learn to make paper flowers and spend hours coloring them, meticulously, exactingly. Memorize jokes, memorize their schedule, do whatever you can to manufacture the experiences you crave. It's an itch that's impossible to scratch, but you have to try or else it'll eat you alive. You drive yourself onwards with the same stubborn, involuntary determination as a person reaching the 84th page of Pornhub search results because goddamnit you haven't found what'll make it stop yet. It's tunnel vision of the worst kind, and no matter how rational or self-aware you are, you can't stop yourself from getting swept up in it. You can scream and struggle inside your own mind, spend every waking minute monitoring your thoughts for anomalous patterns, traitorous thoughts that scream for satisfaction, and ruthlessly squishing every one you find, but the truth is that you were never in control of yourself, and you only ever realize it when you wake up and a you that feels false is piloting your mind and body and the empty agony within you is growing ever larger and you can't make yourself do anything to stop it. All you do is choke on the sickly sweet sea of yearning and feel your identity drown, inch by inch.
And of course when you're pursuing someone you don't tell them about it, what, are you fucking stupid? That goes against the essence of the word. A pursuit implies … it's a chase, it's a hunt, it's having your eye on another and proceeding towards them for your own sake. Humans evolved to be persistence predators, for crying out loud - our gigabrain evolutionary strat was to power walk menacingly at whatever we wanted to eat until it got too tired to run away. Pursuit implies predation, it means opportunism. Outright telling the person you're pursuing that you're pursuing them is like walking up to a cow and co-moo-nicating (bazinga) to them that you'd like to eat them, please and thank you[1]. When you've been consumed by inner thirst to such an extent that your sense of self-worth is nonexistent, the only outcome your predictive capacity can see from openly communicating is that they might refuse - and if they might, they will. So you've got to adopt a different strategy, be the spider to their fly, and manipulate them with great care over an exceedingly long period of time into giving themselves to you. For their sake. Or that might be how you justify it, anyway, that you're doing something good. Anything to distract yourself from the unpleasant truth that you don't really care for them so much as what you feel from them. You thirst for what you don't have because it isn't yours, crawling over scorching dunes after beautiful mirages, looking over patches of real water because it doesn't sparkle and shine like they do. It's not about having it, it's about getting it.
…apologies, I was a worse person before and the memories can still be rather intense. I've broken out of those toxic thought patterns in the intervening time, learned how to preempt their taking root and how to get rid of them while they're still small. An unpleasant process but it had to be done, I wouldn't be alive right now if I hadn't. What was I talking about?
Ah yes, love. What I described above obviously isn't it - or if it is, a staggeringly large number of people are flirting with oblivion and desperately need help - but if unrestrained longing and affection isn't love, what is? Intimate familiarity could be presented as one example, but I'm honestly not convinced by it, though I can't fully articulate why. The above example of not knowing how to miss people are a start of an explanation, I suppose. Maybe this is more of a thing relating to my circumstances more than familiarity not being a part of love. I don't really know who I am, so the faces I present to people are incomplete, in a sense. Some are better constructed than others - in some personas I'm knowledgeable and articulate, in some I'm eager and attentive, yet others quiet and withdrawn, but none of them are really my own face, so to speak. There's probably a japanese saying about this kind of thing.
Anyway, because the faces I present to people aren't real, the connections I forge with them aren't quite real to me either. They're something I can shed as easily as changing clothes, there's no sense of their actions or feelings mattering to me in a sense of innate value. It's more related to convenience - if I piss this person off, I can't use their facility to train. If I don't make an effort to initiate contact with that person, they'll drop off my radar. If I don't make the right words and gestures form in my mouth and hands, this person will think I don't love them, and will express resentment towards me, unconsciously or not. They're relationships of exchange, but not ones I feel any attachment to aside from the potential benefits or detriments they might give me.
So being familiar with someone, even if they trust you completely and tell you things no one besides them has ever heard, isn't love. At least in my opinion. It's not something that you're given, or that you can take. This is probably an incredibly selfish view of things to take, now that I consider it - or rather, now that it seems like an appropriate time to point out to you, dear reader, that I have considered it, in order to make this walk through my thought processes seem less artificially constructed than it is. Even if no one else ever reads these words, the intent behind them is still fundamentally false, because the intent behind them is to provoke a reaction that has been carefully considered in the back of my mind, probably without my conscious realization.
Anyway.
Love can't be taken, and it can't be given to you. So what is it? Why is it so important (allegedly)? Is this entire rant being written solely because it's very late and I'm tired and my pessimism filters are slipping too heavily over my eyes and/or brain? Why am I slamming out so many words for this bullshit when I can barely get myself to string a sentence together for the shit I actually enjoy writing?
This isn't really a complete answer, for the reasons of I'm not ready to let myself go through this sort of change yet, I only vaguely remember the train of thought I had from when I was less tired, and I don't really trust this anyway. Call it reflex. But love isn't taken, nor is it received, it's given. Hoarding it, possessing it, is the antithesis to what I think love is. It's not a thing that can be held or had, only shared. It only exists in the moment that it's directed. Like a sunbeam or some other pretty simile. Can only be seen in relation to other things and whatnot. I should give examples.
Love for another person is wanting them to be happy, without wanting to be happy because they're happy. Does that make sense? It's not something that you can benefit from, at least not directly. It has to be given without expectation of, or even desire for, reward. Whatever form it takes, it has to have this sentiment driving it. It can be towards others, sure, but also towards yourself. Plenty of people don't love themselves, I sure as fuck didn't until a while ago. Still kinda don't. Point being, I reckon love is like the buddhist ideal of compassion - don't quote me on this, I read a book by the Dalai Lama like 7 years ago, that's all I know about the thing - more than a sense of attachment. It's not something that can lead to anything bad. It can't be refused, because it's not given with the expectation that it will be received, so there can't be any sense of pain from rejection. It can't come from emptiness, a sense of wanting, or incompleteness - if you don't have compassion for yourself, you can't realistically give it to anyone else. It's a light that doesn't cast a shadow. It's … it's seeing a cool rock that you know someone you think of will like, picking it up for their sake, and only remembering it's there when you meet them.
- - -
Woah damn. Coming back to this a few days later, man was I in a mood. I wrote all that in like an hour, too - that's more in one sitting than I've managed in several months and it's wasted on a whiny diatribe about my semi-resolved mind scars instead of the stuff I actually enjoy writing. Bleh. Apologies to anyone who read through that, if this ever gets posted somewhere any eyes but my own behold it.
Anyway, since I'm an unrepentant nerd, I figure I may as well cap this off by rambling about the Jedi and how both they and everyone who whines about them not being able to hook up and how that totally sucks bro are wrong and can fight me if they wish to disprove it. Before I'm eviscerated by internet debate people and a host of affronted psychic space paladins, allow me to elucidate.
A big plot thread in the Star Wars prequels is how Anakin and Padme's love for each other (leaving aside, for the moment, how goddamn creepily it's contextualized as happening in AOTC) is a forbidden thing - Anakin's a Jedi, he's not allowed to love, or more specifically, get into a romantic relationship with someone. There Is No Emotion, There Is Peace. There Is No Passion, There Is Serenity. There Is No Third Line, I'm Quoting The Code Out Of Order Anyway. A common criticism of this I've seen is that the Jedi being so dogmatic about this point, refusing to acknowledge the role emotion plays in people's decisions, led them to becoming detached and ignorant of the galaxy's affairs. Fear of being expelled from the Order led Anakin to live a double life, keeping the monumental secret of his marriage from all of his peers and friends, never allowing himself to fully trust them, leading to increasing emotional isolation masked by bravado over time as the stress of the Clone Wars pushed on him, which left plenty of room for his ol' trusty pal The Senate Friendpatine to manipulate him into betraying the Jedi. And sure, that did happen. Anakin was an unstable mess even from before AOTC started, and especially after that movie should've been going through mandatory counseling to resolve the trauma he endured in that clusterfuck of … how long was that movie in-universe, a week? Less? Dude went through some heavy shit, and the Jedi did indeed fuck up as a whole by not realizing that he was in need of help, trust, and assurance until it was too late.
And also the whole 'a Sith is manipulating the galaxy in a double-sided civil war shell game in order to establish a fascist space empire and kill all of you' thing, but really, who would believe it was the Sheev?
Anyway, while those criticisms kinda have a base, since it was explicitly Anakin's love for his son that drove him to betray The Senate and destroy the Sith at the end of the saga (there is no sequel trilogy), they also kinda … don't? Even ignoring all the material that isn't direct movie canon that both disproves that allowing relationships cures dark side blue balls and that the Republic Jedi didn't allow relationships, which there is a lot of*, the whole point of the Jedi not allowing relationships is a misinterpreted one. They didn't disallow that stuff because they're stuffy space monks who don't remember how real people live, they discourage it because they're space paladins with a universal mandate to protect innocents, root out corruption, and fight evil wherever they go, and quite often end up making decisions that impact thousands of lives, at minimum, in drastic and far-reaching ways. For that kind of thing you need to be as objective as possible if you want to do the most good (even if you don't subscribe to utilitarian ethics this applies), and having the inevitable situation pop up where a Jedi's subject to a conflict of interest between saving a loved one and saving a bunch of innocent people (see: around 60% of the plots found in any Star Wars novel) will lead to suboptimal decisions being made, and overall trust in the Order reduced.
Side note, another major reason passionate entanglements aren't a thing the Jedi look lightly on is because the Force seems to function as a sort of psychic feedback loop - this is consistent in pretty much any SW material, what you give to the Force it'll give back to you. This is how the dark side works, it amplifies your fear, anger, and general mental instability and feeds it back to you, the strength and volatility of your emotions means you're more apt to turn to dark side powers to solve a scenario, that feeds back more anger and whatnot into your mind, and before you know it you're a pale-skinned, yellow eyed raving lunatic faster than someone spiraling into a meth addiction and a blackpill mentality simultaneously. Obviously this is reversible if it's caught before you cross any moral event horizons, but given the depths of despondency that romantic troubles can cast a well-meaning person into, is it any wonder that the Jedi would want to minimize the instance of traumatic events within their super-empath population? And hell, this isn't even including the fact that the 'ban' was really just a strong suggestion - see the examples I'll probably list at the bottom.
Point being, the Jedi as an institution didn't forbid romantic interaction because they don't understand the emotions of normal people, it's just that their mandate was to hold to a type of universal compassion, unconditional love for all things. Anakin even says so in AOTC, albeit in such a way that makes it clear that he's using the words as a justification for his infatuation. They discourage romantic attachment because valuing one person more than you value anything else can result in moral dilemmas if, say, you have to sacrifice yourself to save an exploding building full of people or whatever. Jedi were always kinda space buddhist with their non-attachment stuff, which I suppose makes Qui-Gon and those Jedi who followed the philosophy of the Living Force … space Taoist? Anakin's fuckups aside, I don't really think the Jedi were guilty of having the wrong dogma or mission so much as … really, it was their insistence on being involved in political situations but avoiding playing the game of politics that fucked them over. I just plain don't see any evidence for their policy on romance being the one thing that would've saved them if it had been changed.
*Just off the top of my head:
- All the shit in the Legends expanded lore, where Luke sets up a new Jedi order (multiple times, mind you) with relationships allowed only for it to promptly generate a Sith for him to fight in almost every incarnation, Luke turning to the dark side in order to, uh … I forget, but he became Palpatine's apprentice after the guy had been resurrected for the second time or some shit and became evil and then Mara Jade decided to turn good so he did too or some shit, I dunno, Legends was a fuckin mess. Point being there were a lot of instances where a Jedi being allowed romantic connections not only didn't prevent their falling to the dark side, it actively enabled it.
- Obi-Wan was a goddamn manwhore. Can't recall the exact details, but I remember at least 2 or 3 serious romantic relationships he got himself involved in during his time as a Jedi, both before and after training Anakin. He was involved with another Padawan at one point, who died, and then Satine Kryze, who also died, and I think at least one more person, also dead. Dude had bad luck with that kind of thing, but point being, Obi-Wan fucked unrepentantly and no one seemed to give a damn. Hell, even his mentor Qui-Gon was basically in a relationship with another whole-ass Jedi (who also died tragically, the SW universe hates non-traumatized protagonists). No expulsions there.
- Ki-Adi Mundi had a goddamn harem because his species had a low birthrate and it was a mandatory thing for males of his kind. Sure, it was specifically labeled as an exception, and he apparently didn't have much if any interaction with his wives on a personal level, but still.
- A somewhat older (in-universe chronologically) example, but The Old Republic was made by Bioware and you can play as a Jedi in it. I know for a fact from those two things that you can thus play a Jedi and romance one of your followers and probably no one will give a damn. Yes, several thousand years before movie canon, but Star Wars is basically locked in Generic Space Future Stasis as far as culture goes, so it's effectively the same environment.
- Aayla Secura and Kit Fisto. You can't convince me that didn't happen.
- Lastly (though I'm certain there are other examples I'm just overlooking due to not wanting to spend all day sifting through material) do you really believe that Yoda of all people didn't have a fling or two throughout his 900 years? That happened, and now you have to think about it.
[1] Reading this back later, another note can be taken of this sort of toxic mindset from the language used here - the fact that one's own affections are referred to as a predatory action implies that on some level, they know they're engaging in behavior that's unhealthy, be that for themselves or for others. Additionally, the self-worth of the person who thinks like this is in such a deteriorated, negative state that it's seemingly hard for them to believe that anything they do could ever be positively received, or turn out well - they hate themselves, and that colors their perception of how everyone else views them. It's a uniquely interesting cycle of self-defeat, as you beat yourself down for being a bad person, and then seek out comfort in whatever form you can perceive to relieve the mental strain you're experiencing, and then punish yourself more for attempting to relieve said pain because you think you'll spread it to other people.
Truth be told I've no recollection of how I managed to break out of that particular cycle. I do remember it being very anticlimactic, though.
ganonso
Compulsive Quest Starter
- Location
- PACA France
You know the funniest thing about the Jedi discouraging eros or romantic love? They were totally right to do so. Anakin fall because in the end he loves his wife so much he will do anything, even killing children to save her. Because their lives are less worth than her. It's eros at his worst.
But most of us cannot see their relationship as negative because we are basically conditioned to think love is good and cannot be in itself problematic. It doesn't help of course the relationship is presented very creepily.
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
I don't really think Anakin's love for Padme was rooted in her so much as his fear of being alone. It's a thing that seems to have followed him from his days on Tatooine - his friends were kinda tangential, Watto didn't give two shits about him, his mother gave him away and then died the second he got her back. Even his romance with Padme seemed to me to be focused around the 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' trope. The guy was always isolated from his peers by the status as the chosen one, so never formed any strong connections there, so the few relationships he did develop he clung onto extremely tightly. It was that fear of letting go that did him in, I think - the notion of being alone hurt him to such a profound degree that he'd rather literally kill children rather than have that happen. Fear leads to anger.
Oh right, that was another point I wanted to make but forgot - what would the consequence even be if Anakin's relationship got discovered? Let's say he gets kicked out of the Jedi, does the order just ignore him forever after that? They let Dooku retire in peace, and Padme was former royalty on Naboo, there's no doubt in my mind that they'd have had a decent life if Anakin wasn't a Jedi. Not like the guy was getting paid for being a space monk anyway, and I'm sure he'd find something to do. I'd reckon that again this wasn't so much because he cared about being a Jedi, though that's what it appears on the surface, so much as that the Order is what he knows, and he'll be damned if he throws himself into uncertainty like that. If he's not a Jedi, he loses the few connections with people he has there. If he's not a Jedi, then who is he? All questions difficult to answer at the best of times, and least so when you're anakin skywalker.
The Froggy Ninja
The Blade Will Never Die
Yeah. Mania, the Obsessive Love stems from a selfish desire to own and hoard loved ones, as opposed to Eros, the Passionate Love founded on physical and emotional compatibility or Pragma, the Enduring Love formed by shared experience. Eros is fun and ideally settles into Pragma but Mania is just objectively bad.
So, probably they'd take his lightsaber and give him a stern talking to about not using the force too much. The thing is, the main risk of attachment to a jedi is not necessarily to them or even the people around them, but to their duties. If Anakin was kicked out, he wouldn't have had access to the Temple to merc all those kids (at least, not with the casual ease he did in canon). Being a jedi means both that you have an important job to do that will become a problem if you don't do it and that you have access to dangerous, vital and/or sensitive locations, objects and people, whereas being some schmuck with the force but no lightsaber means that you can do some party tricks and are generally better at most things than is normal. Also that Jedi spend literally all of their time immersed in the Force. If you don't live in constant contact, you're less likely to start a supernaturally reinforcing tantrum spiral.